The year 1959 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy and space exploration
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- January 2 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 is launched by a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; the first man-made object to attain escape velocity, it is intended to impact Earth's Moon, but an error causes it instead to become the first spacecraft to fly by the Moon and the first man-made object to enter heliocentric orbit.
- February 6 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.
- February 17 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, is launched to measure cloud cover for the United States Navy.
- March 3 – Lunar probe Pioneer 4 becomes the first American object to escape dominance by Earth's gravity.
- April 9 – NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first United States astronauts, later known as the 'Mercury Seven'.
- May 28 – Jupiter AM-18 rocket launches two primates, Miss Baker and Miss Able, into space from Cape Canaveral in the United States along with living microorganisms and plant seeds. Successful recovery makes them the first living beings to return safely to Earth after space flight.
- June 25 – A KH-1 Corona satellite, believed to be the first operational spy satellite, is launched as science mission "Discoverer 4" from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a Thor-Agena rocket.
- July 7 – At 14:28 UT Venus occults the star Regulus. The rare event (which will next occur on October 1, 2044) is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of Venus' atmosphere.
- August 7 – The United States launches the Explorer 6 satellite from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral.
- August 14 – Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from orbit.
- September 14 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to crash on Earth's Moon.
- September 19 – Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison establish the scientific rationale for SETI with the publishing of their seminal paper "Searching for Interstellar Communications" in Nature.
- October 7 – Russian probe Luna 3 sends back the first images of the far side of Earth's Moon.
- October 13 – The United States launches Explorer 7.
- November 24 – Yardymli meteorite makes a landfall in Azerbaijan.
- December 4 – Little Joe 2, a mission in the Mercury program, carries Sam, a rhesus macaque monkey, close to the edge of space.
- Coma Berenicids discovered.[1]
- First successful test of a nuclear thermal rocket engine, as part of Project Rover at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States under Raemer Schreiber.[2]
- ^ "Coma Berenicids". Meteor Showers Online. Archived from the original on 2010-11-25. Retrieved 2011-11-08.
- ^ Pace, Eric (31 December 1998). "R. E. Schreiber, 88, Nuclear Bomb Physicist". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
- ^ Chang, M. C. (1959). "Fertilization of Rabbit Ova in vitro". Nature. 184 (4684): 466–67. Bibcode:1959Natur.184..466C. doi:10.1038/184466a0. PMID 13809155.
- ^ Greep, Roy O. (1991). "Min Chueh Chang". Biographical Memoirs. United States National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2011-08-15.
- ^ Karlson Peter; Lüscher Martin (1959). "Pheromones: a new term for a class of biologically active substances". Nature. 183 (4653): 55–56. Bibcode:1959Natur.183...55K. doi:10.1038/183055a0. PMID 13622694.
- ^ Grassé, P.-P. (1959). "La reconstruction du nid et les coordinations inter-individuelles chez Belicositermes natalensis et Cubitermes sp. La théorie de la Stigmergie: Essai d'interprétation du comportement des termites constructeurs". Insectes Sociaux (6): 41–80.
- ^ "Disc Electrophoresis". Archived from the original on 2011-09-26. Retrieved 2011-10-16.
- ^ Gardner, Martin (October 1959). "Mathematical Games: Problems involving questions of probability and ambiguity". Scientific American. 201 (4): 174–182. Bibcode:1959SciAm.201d.174G. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1059-174.
- ^ Gardner, Martin (November 1959). "Mathematical Games: How three modern mathematicians disproved a celebrated conjecture of Leonhard Euler". Scientific American. 201 (5): 188. Bibcode:1959SciAm.201e.181G. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1159-181.
- ^ Iwasawa, Kenkichi (1959). "On Γ-extensions of algebraic number fields". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 65 (4): 183–226. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1959-10317-7. ISSN 0002-9904. MR 0124316. Zbl 0089.02402.
- ^ "Minamata disease". United Nations University. Retrieved 2010-10-17.
- ^ Machado, Calixto (2005). "The first organ transplant from a brain-dead donor". Neurology. 64 (11): 1938–42. doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000163515.09793.cb. PMID 15955947.
- ^ McLaughlin, Thomas P.; et al. (May 2000). "A Review of Criticality Accidents" (PDF). CSRIC. Los Alamos National Laboratory. p. 96. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-26.
Radiation doses were intense, being estimated at 205, 320, 410, 415, 422, and 433 rem.74 Of the six persons present, one died and the other five recovered after severe cases of radiation sickness.
- ^ Johnston, Wm. Robert (2005-09-14). "Vinca reactor accident, 1958". Database of radiological incidents and related events – Johnston's Archive. Retrieved 2012-07-02.
- ^ Martin, Douglas (2010-10-20). "Dr. Georges Mathé, Transplant Pioneer, Dies at 88". The New York Times.
- ^ Pence, G. E. (2008). "Preventing the Global Spread of AIDS". Medical Ethics: Accounts of the Cases That Shaped and Define Medical Ethics. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 330.
- ^ "The man who saved a million lives: Nils Bohlin - inventor of the seat belt". The Independent. London. 2009-08-19. Retrieved 2009-12-08.
- ^ "Apparatus for facilitating the loading and unloading of passengers and cargo : US Grant US3046908A".
- ^ "1960 - Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) Transistor Demonstrated". The Silicon Engine. Computer History Museum.
- ^ Bassett, Ross Knox (2007). To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-up Companies and the Rise of MOS Technology. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 22. ISBN 9780801886393.
- ^ Chan, Yi-Jen (1992). Studies of InAIAs/InGaAs and GaInP/GaAs heterostructure FET's for high speed applications. University of Michigan. p. 1.
The Si MOSFET has revolutionized the electronics industry and as a result impacts our daily lives in almost every conceivable way.
- ^ Wong, Kit Po (2009). Electrical Engineering. Vol. II. EOLSS Publications. p. 7. ISBN 9781905839780.
- ^ "13 Sextillion & Counting: The Long & Winding Road to the Most Frequently Manufactured Human Artifact in History". Computer History Museum. 2018-03-02. Retrieved 2019-07-28.
- ^ Baker, R. Jacob (2011). CMOS: Circuit Design, Layout and Simulation. John Wiley & Sons. p. 7. ISBN 978-1118038239.
- ^ Gould, R. Gordon (1959). "The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". In Franken, P. A.; Sands, R. H. (eds.). The Ann Arbor Conference on Optical Pumping, the University of Michigan, 15 June through 18 June 1959. p. 128. OCLC 02460155.
- ^ Challoner, Jack, ed. (2009). 1001 Inventions That Changed the World. London: Cassell. p. 754. ISBN 978-1-84403-611-0.
- ^ Graham, Lois (1959). Effect of adding a combustible to atmosphere surrounding diffusion flame (Thesis). OCLC 45226021.
- ^ "Alumni Awards 2015: Lifetime Achievement Award: Lois Graham (M.S. ME '49, Ph.D. '59)". Illinois Institute of Technology. 2015. Archived from the original on 2018-11-20. Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ Gallagher, James (2023-10-02). "Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines". BBC News. Retrieved 2023-10-02.