1974 in science

The year 1974 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 8 – After 84 days in space, the last crew of the temporary American space station Skylab return to Earth.
• February 13–15 – Sagittarius A*, thought to be the location of a supermassive black hole, is identified by Bruce Balick and Robert Brown using the baseline interferometer of the United States National Radio Astronomy Observatory. ^[1]
• November 16 – Arecibo message transmitted from Arecibo Observatory (Puerto Rico) to Messier 13.
• Hawking radiation is predicted by Stephen Hawking. ^[2]

Computer Science

• The Mark-8 microcomputer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor is designed by Jonathan Titus. It is announced on the cover of the July 1974 issue of Radio-Electronics as "Your Personal Minicomputer".

History of science

• F. W. Winterbotham publishes The Ultra secret: the inside story of Operation Ultra, Bletchley Park and Enigma, the first popular account of cryptography carried out at Bletchley Park during World War II.

Mathematics

• Yves Hellegouarch proposes a connection between Fermat's Last Theorem and the Frey curve. ^[3]

Medicine

• September 25 – 1974 – The first "Tommy John surgery" for replacement of ulnar collateral ligament of elbow joint is performed by Frank Jobe in the United States.
• Identification of controlled trials in perinatal medicine, as advocated by Archie Cochrane, begins in Cardiff, Wales. ^[4]
• Henry Heimlich describes the "Heimlich Maneuver" as a treatment for choking. ^[5]

Paleoanthropology and paleontology

• November 24 – A group of paleoanthropologists discover remains of a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, nicknaming her "Lucy".

Physics

• May 18 – "Smiling Buddha", India's first nuclear test explosion takes place underground at Pokhran. ^[6]
• "November Revolution": J/ψ meson, the first particle found to contain a charm quark, discovered by teams at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, led by Samuel Ting, ^[7] and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, led by Burton Richter. ^[8]

Physiology

• May – British neuroscientists John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz announce their isolation of the peptides met- and leu-enkephalin.

Psychology

• Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins is published by Konrad Lorenz.
• Leon Kamin demonstrates that Sir Cyril Burt's influential research into heritability of IQ using twin studies shows evidence of statistical falsification. ^[9]

Technology

• June 26 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time, to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, the first use of barcode technology in American retailing. ^[10]
• Stephen Salter invents the "Salter Duck", a wave energy converter.

Zoology

• January 7 – Outbreak of 4-year Gombe Chimpanzee War in Tanzania, reported by Jane Goodall.
• Digital dermatitis in cattle identified in Italy by Cheli and Mortellaro.

Other events

• Rubik's Cube invented by Ernő Rubik. ^[11]

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Enrico Bombieri and David Mumford
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Martin Ryle, Antony Hewish ^[12]
  • Chemistry – Paul J. Flory
  • Medicine – Albert Claude, Christian de Duve, George Emil Palade
• Turing Award – Donald Knuth

Births

• March 10 – Biz Stone, American computing entrepreneur
• August 8 – Manjul Bhargava, Canadian-born mathematician
• August 11 – Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, English cognitive neuroscientist
• September 28 – Sunil Kumar Verma, Indian biologist

Deaths

• February 4 – S. N. Bose, Indian physicist (b. 1894)
• April 12 – Cornelis Simon Meijer, Dutch mathematician (b. 1904)
• May 4 – Ludwig Koch, German-born British animal sound recordist (b. 1881)
• May 18 – Harry Ricardo, English mechanical engineer (b. 1885)
• May 22 – Irmgard Flügge-Lotz (b. 1903), German-American mathematician and aerospace engineer
• June 28 – Vannevar Bush, American science administrator (b. 1890)
• July 3 – Sergey Lebedev, Soviet Russian computer scientist (b. 1902)
• August 22 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born British scientific polymath (b. 1908)

References

1. Melia, Fulvio (2007). The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole. Princeton University Press. p. 2. ISBN   978-0-691-13129-0.
2. Hawking, S. W. (1974-03-01). "Black hole explosions?". Nature . 248 (5443): 30. Bibcode:1974Natur.248...30H. doi:10.1038/248030a0. S2CID   4290107.
3. Hellegouarch, Yves (1974). "Points d'ordre 2p^h sur les courbes elliptiques" (PDF). Acta Arithmetica. 26 (3). Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Matematyczny: 253–263. doi: 10.4064/aa-26-3-253-263 . ISSN   0065-1036. MR   0379507.
4. "About the Cochrane Library". The Cochrane Library. Archived from the original on 2011-01-05. Retrieved 2011-01-25.
5. Heimlich, H. (June 1974). "Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary". Emergency Medicine.
6. "India's Nuclear Weapons Program – Smiling Buddha: 1974". Nuclear Weapon Archive. 2001. Archived from the original on 19 May 2011. Retrieved 2011-05-25.
7. Aubert, J. J.; et al. (2 December 1974). "Experimental Observation of a Heavy Particle J". Physical Review Letters. 33 (23): 1404–6. Bibcode:1974PhRvL..33.1404A. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.33.1404 .
8. Augustin, J.-E.; et al. (2 December 1974). "Discovery of a Narrow Resonance in e⁺e⁻ Annihilation". Physical Review Letters . 33 (23): 1406–8. Bibcode:1974PhRvL..33.1406A. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.33.1406 .
9. Gillie, O. (1976-10-24). "Crucial data was faked by eminent psychologist". The Sunday Times . London.
10. Kleinman, Zoe (2012-10-07). "Barcode birthday: 60 years since patent". BBC News . Retrieved 2013-06-29.
11. Fotheringham, William (2007). Fotheringham's Sporting Pastimes. Anova Books. p.  50. ISBN   978-1-86105-953-6.
12. "6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism". National Geographic News. 19 May 2013. Archived from the original on September 3, 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2021.