1993 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1993 in science
and technology
involved many significant events, listed below.
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 many significant events, listed below.
Astronomy and space exploration
- December 2 - STS-61STS-61STS-61 was the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The mission launched on 2 December 1993 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission restored the spaceborne observatory's vision, marred by spherical aberration, with the...
is launched. This Space ShuttleSpace ShuttleThe Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
mission to the Hubble Space TelescopeHubble Space TelescopeThe Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...
(HST) installs corrective optics, plus upgrades, that not only allow the telescope to focus properly, but also increase magnification/clarity beyond the original design. HST had been pre-designed for such continuous improvement. - February 13 - AsteroidAsteroidAsteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
7253 Nara7253 Nara7253 Nara is a Main-belt asteroid discovered on February 13, 1993 by Fumiaki Uto at Uto.-External links:*...
is discovered by Fumiaki UtoFumiaki Utois a Japanese astronomer.He has discovered numerous asteroids, including 7253 Nara, 7895 Kaseda, 8041 Masumoto and 9648 Gotouhideo. He is credited with the discovery of 21 minor planets between 1992 and 1999.-References:...
.
Computer science
- March 22 - The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips
- March 31 - A bug in a program written by Richard Depew sends an article to 200 newsgroups simultaneously. The term spamming is coined by Joel FurrJoel FurrJoel K. "Jay" Furr is a writer and software trainer notable as a Usenet personality in the early and mid 1990s....
to describe the incident. - April 22 - Release of version 1.0 of the MosaicMosaic (web browser)Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
web browser.
Mathematics
- June 21 - Andrew WilesAndrew WilesSir Andrew John Wiles KBE FRS is a British mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University, specializing in number theory...
announces a proof of Fermat's Last TheoremFermat's Last TheoremIn number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two....
at the Isaac Newton InstituteIsaac Newton InstituteThe Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences is an international research institute for mathematics and theoretical physics. Part of the University of Cambridge, it is named after one of the university's most illustrious figures, the mathematician and natural philosopher Sir Isaac Newton....
. The proof is slightly flawed, but Wiles announces a revised proof the following year.
Medicine
- February - The New England Journal of MedicineNew England Journal of MedicineThe New England Journal of Medicine is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It describes itself as the oldest continuously published medical journal in the world.-History:...
publishes findings demonstrating that patients with peptic ulcers can be successfully treated with antibiotics, lending strong support to the discovery that peptic ulcer disease is caused by H. pyloriTimeline of peptic ulcer disease and Helicobacter pyloriThis is a timeline of the events relating to the discovery that peptic ulcer disease is caused by H. pylori. In 2005, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery that peptic ulcer disease was primarily caused by Helicobacter pylori, a...
. - August - Formal launch of the Cochrane CollaborationCochrane CollaborationThe Cochrane Collaboration is a group of over 28,000 volunteers in more than 100 countries who review the effects of health care interventions tested in biomedical randomized controlled trials. A few more recent reviews have also studied the results of non-randomized, observational studies...
. - The "Intelligent ProsthesisProsthesisIn medicine, a prosthesis, prosthetic, or prosthetic limb is an artificial device extension that replaces a missing body part. It is part of the field of biomechatronics, the science of using mechanical devices with human muscle, skeleton, and nervous systems to assist or enhance motor control...
", the first commercially available microprocessorMicroprocessorA microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
-controlled prosthetic knee, is released by UK company Charles A. Blatchford & Sons.
Awards
- Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe 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- PhysicsNobel Prize in PhysicsThe 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...
- Russell A. Hulse, Joseph H. Taylor Jr. - ChemistryNobel Prize in ChemistryThe 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,...
- Kary MullisKary MullisKary Banks Mullis is a Nobel Prize winning American biochemist, author, and lecturer. In recognition of his improvement of the polymerase chain reaction technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith and earned the Japan Prize in the same year. The process was first...
, Michael SmithMichael Smith (chemist)Michael Smith, CC, OBC, FRS was a British-born Canadian biochemist who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.-Biography:... - MedicineNobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe 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...
- Richard J. RobertsRichard J. RobertsSir Richard "Rich" John Roberts is a British biochemist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing.When he was 4, his family moved to Bath. In...
, Phillip A. Sharp
- Physics
- Turing AwardTuring AwardThe Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
- Juris HartmanisJuris HartmanisJuris Hartmanis is a prominent computer scientist and computational theorist who, with Richard E. Stearns, received the 1993 ACM Turing Award "in recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory".Hartmanis was born in Latvia...
, Richard StearnsRichard Stearns (computer scientist)Richard Edwin Stearns is a prominent computer scientist who, with Juris Hartmanis, received the 1993 ACM Turing Award "in recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory"... - Wollaston Medal for GeologyWollaston MedalThe Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831...
- Samuel EpsteinSamuel Epstein (geochemist)Samuel Epstein was a Canadian-American geochemist who developed methods for reconstructing geologic temperature records using stable isotope geochemistry...
Deaths
- February 11 - Robert W. HolleyRobert W. HolleyRobert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.Holley was born in Urbana, Illinois, and graduated from Urbana High School in 1938...
, American biochemist, Nobel PrizeNobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe 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...
laureate (b. 1922)