1961 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1961 in science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

 involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

  • January 31 - Ham
    Ham the Chimp
    Ham , also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, was the first chimpanzee launched into outer space in the American space program...

    , a 37-pound male chimpanzee
    Chimpanzee
    Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

    , is rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury
    Project Mercury
    In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12,...

     capsule designed to carry U.S.
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

     astronaut
    Astronaut
    An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

    s into space.
  • April 12 - Yuri Gagarin
    Yuri Gagarin
    Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961....

     is the first human in space.
  • April 15 - R. N. Schwartz and Charles Hard Townes
    Charles Hard Townes
    Charles Hard Townes is an American Nobel Prize-winning physicist and educator. Townes is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he got the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices. He shared the Nobel...

     publish "Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers" in Nature
    Nature (journal)
    Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

    , providing a basis for Optical SETI.
  • May 19 - Venera program: Venera 1
    Venera 1
    On February 12, 1961, 00:34:36 UTC, was the first planetary probe launched to Venus by the Soviet Union. The Venus-1 Automatic Interplanetary Station, or Venera 1, was a 643.5 kg probe consisting of a cylindrical body 1.05 metres in diameter topped by a dome, totalling 2.035 metres...

     becomes the first manmade object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus
    Venus
    Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

     (however the probe had lost contact with earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).
  • May 25 - Apollo program: President Kennedy
    John F. Kennedy
    John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

     announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the moon
    Moon
    The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

    " before the end of the decade.
  • The first quasar
    Quasar
    A quasi-stellar radio source is a very energetic and distant active galactic nucleus. Quasars are extremely luminous and were first identified as being high redshift sources of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves and visible light, that were point-like, similar to stars, rather than...

     is discovered by Allan Sandage
    Allan Sandage
    Allan Rex Sandage was an American astronomer. He was Staff Member Emeritus with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. He is best known for determining the first reasonably accurate value for the Hubble constant and the age of the universe.-Career:Sandage was one of the most...

     at Mt Palomar, California
    California
    California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

    .

Geophysics

  • Francis Birch
    Francis Birch (geophysicist)
    Albert Francis Birch was an American geophysicist best known for his experimental work on the properties of Earth-forming minerals at high pressure and temperature, in 1952 he published a well-known paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research ,where he demonstrated that the mantle is chiefly...

     establishes Birch's law on compressional wave velocities.

Medicine

  • Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
    Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
    Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans. It is also called multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and oxacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus...

     is first discovered, in the United Kingdom
    United Kingdom
    The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

    .
  • Thalidomide
    Thalidomide
    Thalidomide was introduced as a sedative drug in the late 1950s that was typically used to cure morning sickness. In 1961, it was withdrawn due to teratogenicity and neuropathy. There is now a growing clinical interest in thalidomide, and it is introduced as an immunomodulatory agent used...

     is withdrawn from sale.

Physics

  • February 14 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium
    Lawrencium
    Lawrencium is a radioactive synthetic chemical element with the symbol Lr and atomic number 103. In the periodic table of the elements, it is a period 7 d-block element and the last element of actinide series...

    , is first synthesized at Berkeley, California
    Berkeley, California
    Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

    .
  • Spain
    Spain
    Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

     joins CERN
    CERN
    The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...

    ; Yugoslavia
    Yugoslavia
    Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

     leaves.

Awards

  • Nobel Prize
    Nobel Prize
    The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

    s
    • Physics
      Nobel Prize in Physics
      The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...

       - Robert Hofstadter
      Robert Hofstadter
      Robert Hofstadter was an American physicist. He was the joint winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of nucleons."-Biography :Born in New York City, he entered City...

      , Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer
    • Chemistry
      Nobel Prize in Chemistry
      The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...

       - Melvin Calvin
      Melvin Calvin
      Melvin Ellis Calvin was an American chemist most famed for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He spent most of his five-decade career at the University of California, Berkeley.- Life :Calvin was born...

    • Medicine
      Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
      The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...

       - Georg von Békésy
      Georg von Békésy
      Georg von Békésy was a Hungarian biophysicist born in Budapest, Hungary.In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the function of the cochlea in the mammalian hearing organ.-Research:Békésy developed a method for dissecting the inner ear of human...


Births

  • March 10 - Laurel Clark (d. 2003
    2003 in science
    The year 2003 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Anthropology:*March 13 – The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints have been found in Italy.-Astronomy:...

    ), American
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

     astronaut
    Astronaut
    An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

    .
  • July 1 - Kalpana Chawla
    Kalpana Chawla
    Kalpana Chawla was an Indian-American astronaut with NASA. She was one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.-Early life:...

     (d. 2003
    2003 in science
    The year 2003 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Anthropology:*March 13 – The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints have been found in Italy.-Astronomy:...

    ), India
    India
    India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

    n astronaut
    Astronaut
    An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

    .
  • September 23 - William C. McCool
    William C. McCool
    William Cameron "Willie" McCool was a United States Navy Commander, NASA astronaut and the pilot of Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107...

     (d. 2003
    2003 in science
    The year 2003 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Anthropology:*March 13 – The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints have been found in Italy.-Astronomy:...

    ), American
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

     astronaut
    Astronaut
    An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

    .

Deaths

  • January 4 - Erwin Schrödinger
    Erwin Schrödinger
    Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...

     (b. 1887
    1887 in science
    The year 1887 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.-Events:* March 7 - North Carolina State University is established as North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts....

    ), physicist
    Physicist
    A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

    .
  • June 6 - Carl Jung
    Carl Jung
    Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...

     (b. 1875
    1875 in science
    The year 1875 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Chemistry:* Gallium is discovered spectroscopically by French chemist Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Later this year he obtains the free metal by electrolysis of its hydroxide and names it...

    ), psychiatrist
    Psychiatrist
    A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

    .
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