1950 in science

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Operating room in Milan in 1950

The year 1950 in science and technology included some significant events.

Astronomy and space sciences

• Dutch astronomer Jan Oort postulates the existence of an orbiting cloud of planets (the Oort cloud) at the outermost edge of the Solar System. ^[1]
• Enrico Fermi discusses the Fermi paradox. ^[2]

Biology

• Melvin Calvin, James Bassham, and Andrew Benson at the University of California, Berkeley, discover the Calvin cycle in photosynthesis. ^[3]
• Entomologist Willi Hennig publishes Grundzüge einer Theorie der phylogenetischen Systematik in East Germany, pioneering the study of cladistics.
• Full-scale release of myxomatosis for control of the Australian rabbit population.

Chemistry

• February 9 – Californium, a radioactive actinide transuranium element, is first synthesized by Stanley G. Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley. ^{[4] [5] [6]}

Computer science

• March – Publication of Claude Shannon's paper "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess", seminal in the development of computer chess and introducing the Shannon number. ^[7]
• April – Publication of Richard Hamming's paper "Error detecting and error correcting codes", seminal in the construction of error detection and correction codes ^{[8] [9]} and from which Hamming code and the Hamming distance derive.
• August 25 – In the early history of video games, Bertie the Brain is first displayed to the public at the Canadian National Exhibition. ^[10]
• October – Publication of Alan Turing's paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", seminal in the study of artificial intelligence and presenting the Turing test. ^{[11] [12]}

Mathematics

• John Forbes Nash, Jr. proposes the Nash equilibrium in game theory, initially in his Princeton doctoral thesis. ^{[13] [14] [15]}
• The prisoner's dilemma is framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher at RAND and formalized and named by Albert W. Tucker. ^[16]

Medicine

• June 17 – The first cadaveric internal kidney transplantation is performed on Ruth Tucker, a 44-year-old woman with polycystic kidney disease, at Little Company of Mary Hospital (Evergreen Park), Illinois. Although the donated kidney is rejected 10 months later because no effective immunosuppressive drugs have been developed at this time, the intervening time gives Tucker's remaining kidney time to recover and she lives another 5 years. ^[17]
• October – Australian-born British thoracic surgeon Norman Barrett describes the condition which will become known as Barrett's oesophagus. ^[18]
• November – Eugene Roberts and Sam Frankel of Washington University School of Medicine report their discovery that GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is produced from glutamic acid and accumulates in the mammalian central nervous system, using newly-developed techniques of chromatography to analyze protein-free extracts of mammalian brain. ^{[19] [20]}
• December 11 – The typical antipsychotic Chlorpromazine is first synthesized.
• Antihistamine discovered.
• The Duffy antigen is identified in a multiply-transfused hemophiliac patient. ^[21]
• An external artificial pacemaker is developed by John A. Hopps in conjunction with Wilfred Gordon Bigelow at Toronto General Hospital.

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Physics

• July – Oleg Lavrentiev outlines the concept of the tokamak. ^[22]
• John Ward derives the Ward–Takahashi identity in quantum field theory. ^[23]

Technology

• October 11 – A field-sequential color system developed by Hungarian American engineer Dr. Peter Goldmark becomes the first color television system to be adopted for commercial use (by CBS in the United States), but is abandoned a year later. ^{[24] [25]}
• Canadians Harry Wasylyk, Larry Hansen and Frank Plomp introduce the plastic bin bag for garbage collection. ^[26]
• First practical pager, developed and manufactured by the Reevesound Company, is introduced for physicians in the New York City area. ^[27]

Events

• August 12 – In his encyclical Humani generis , Pope Pius XII declares evolution to be a serious hypothesis that does not contradict essential Roman Catholic teachings.
• J. Z. Young delivers the BBC Reith Lectures on Doubt and Certainty in Science , introducing the radio audience to current developments in neurophysiology.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics (first postwar award): Laurent Schwartz and Atle Selberg
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Cecil Frank Powell
  • Chemistry – Otto Paul Hermann Diels, Kurt Alder
  • Medicine – Edward Calvin Kendall, Tadeus Reichstein, Philip Showalter Hench

Births

• March 2 – James W. Pennebaker, American social psychologist.
• March 5 – Henry Marsh, English neurosurgeon.
• March 18 – Linda Partridge, English biogerontologist.
• May 16 – Georg Bednorz, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1987.
• June 8 – Stanley J. Korsmeyer (died 2005), American cell biologist.
• July 4 – Steven Sasson, American electrical engineer.
• October 21 – Ronald McNair (died on mission 1986), African American physicist and astronaut.
• November 1 – Robert B. Laughlin, American physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1998.
• November 3 – James Rothman, American cell biologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013.
• November 22 – Eva-Maria Neher, née Ruhr, German biochemist.
• December 13 – Julia Slingo, English meteorologist.
• December 27 – Joe Armstrong (died 2019), English computer scientist.
• December 28 – Frank Kelly, British mathematician.

Deaths

• February 25 – George Minot (born 1885), American physician, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1934.
• March – John Ryle (born 1889), English physician and epidemiologist.
• April 1 – Charles R. Drew (born 1904), African American physician, pioneer in blood transfusion.
• April 28 – Oakes Ames (born 1874), American botanist.
• September 10 – Annie Montague Alexander (born 1867), American paleontologist.
• September 21 – Arthur Milne (born 1896), English space physicist.
• December 11 – Leslie Comrie (born 1893), New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer.

References

1. Oort, Jan (1950). "The structure of the cloud of comets surrounding the Solar System and a hypothesis concerning its origin". Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands . 11: 91–110. Bibcode:1950BAN....11...91O.
2. Jones, Eric M. (March 1985). ""Where is everybody?": An account of Fermi's question" (PDF). Los Alamos technical report.
3. Bassham, J.; Benson, A.; Calvin, M. (1950). "The path of carbon in photosynthesis" (PDF). Journal of Biological Chemistry . 185 (2): 781–7. doi:10.2172/910351. PMID   14774424. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-02-19. Retrieved 2011-06-10.
4. Thompson, S. G.; Street, Jr. K.; Ghiorso, A.; Seaborg, G. T. (1950). "Element 98". Physical Review . 78 (3): 298. Bibcode:1950PhRv...78..298T. doi: 10.1103/PhysRev.78.298.2 .
5. Thompson, S. G.; Street, Jr. K.; Ghiorso, A.; Seaborg, G. T. (1950). "The New Element Californium (Atomic Number 98)" (PDF). Physical Review. 80 (5): 790. Bibcode:1950PhRv...80..790T. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.80.790.
6. Street, K. Jr.; Thompson, S. G.; Seaborg, G. T. (1950). "Chemical Properties of Californium" (PDF). Journal of the American Chemical Society . 72 (10): 4832. doi:10.1021/ja01166a528. hdl:2027/mdp.39015086449173. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-19. Retrieved 2012-03-17.
7. Shannon, Claude E. (March 1950). "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess" (PDF). Philosophical Magazine . 41 (314): 256–75. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-06. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
8. Hamming, R. W. (April 1950). "Error detecting and error correcting codes" (PDF). Bell System Technical Journal . 29 (2): 147–160. doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1950.tb00463.x. hdl:10945/46756. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-15. Retrieved 2012-05-12.
9. O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. (January 2012). "Richard Wesley Hamming". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive . University of St Andrews . Retrieved 2012-05-12.
10. Bateman, Chris (2014-08-13). "Meet Bertie the Brain, the world's first arcade game, built in Toronto". Spacing . Archived from the original on 2015-12-22. Retrieved 2014-11-16.
11. Turing, A. M. (October 1950). "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Mind . 59 (236): 433–60. doi:10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433. Archived from the original on 2008-07-02. Retrieved 2011-11-28.
12. Epstein, Robert; Roberts, Gary; Beber, Grace, eds. (2009). Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. New York: Kluwer. ISBN   978-1-4020-6708-2.
13. Osborne, M. J. (2004), An Introduction to Game Theory, Oxford University Press, p. 23
14. Nash, J. F. (1950). "Equilibrium Points in N-person Games". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 36 (1): 48–9. Bibcode:1950PNAS...36...48N. doi: 10.1073/pnas.36.1.48 . MR   0031701. PMC   1063129 . PMID   16588946..
15. Nash, J. F. (1950). "The Bargaining Problem". Econometrica . 18 (2): 155–62. doi:10.2307/1907266. JSTOR   1907266. MR   0035977..
16. Poundstone, William (1992). Prisoner's Dilemma. New York: Doubleday. ISBN   978-0385415675.
17. Petechuk, David (2006). Organ transplantation . Greenwood. p.  11. ISBN   978-0-313-33542-6. kidney transplant ruth tucker.
18. Barrett, N. R. (October 1950). "Chronic Peptic Ulcer of the Œsophagus and 'Œsophagitis'". British Journal of Surgery . 38 (150): 175–82. doi:10.1002/bjs.18003815005. PMID   14791960. S2CID   72315839.
19. Spiering, Martin J. (December 2018). "The discovery of GABA in the brain". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 293 (49): 19159–19160. doi: 10.1074/jbc.cl118.006591 . ISSN   0021-9258. PMC   6295731 . PMID   30530855.
20. Roberts, E.; Frankel, S. (November 1950). "gamma-Aminobutyric acid in brain: its formation from glutamic acid". Journal of Biological Chemistry . 187 (1): 55–63. doi: 10.1016/S0021-9258(19)50929-2 . ISSN   0021-9258. PMID   14794689.
21. Cutbush, M.; Mollison, P.L.; Parkin, D.M. (1950-02-04). "A New Human Blood Group". Nature . 165 (4188): 188–189. Bibcode:1950Natur.165..188C. doi:10.1038/165188b0. S2CID   4265241.
22. Sharma, R. G. (2015). Superconductivity: Basics and Applications to Magnets. Springer. p. 311. ISBN   9783319137131 . Retrieved 2019-06-27.
23. Ward, J. C. (1950). "An identity in quantum electrodynamics". Physical Review . 78 (2): 182. Bibcode:1950PhRv...78..182W. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.78.182.
24. "C.B.S. Color Video Starts Nov. 20; Adapters Needed by Present Sets". The New York Times . 1950-10-12. p. 1.
25. Slotten, Hugh Richard (2000). Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States 1920–1960. JHU Press. ISBN   978-0-8018-6450-6.
26. "The Greatest Canadian Invention". CBC Television. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010.
27. "Pocket Radio Pages Doctors Night Or Day". Popular Science . January 1951.