1984 in science

The year 1984 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
• The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the United States converts the 36-foot radio telescope on Kitt Peak (originally built in 1967) to the ARO 12m Radio Telescope.

Biology

• First known case of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in England. ^[1]
• The enzyme telomerase is discovered by Carol W. Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn in the ciliate Tetrahymena . ^[2]
• Danish physiologist Steen Willadsen first successfully uses cells from early embryos to clone a mammal (sheep) by nuclear transfer at the British Agricultural Research Council's Institute of Animal Physiology, Cambridge. ^{[3] [4]}

Chemistry and physics

• Peter Kramer ^[5] and Dan Shechtman ^[6] publish their discoveries of what will soon afterwards be named quasicrystals. ^[7]
• Hiroshi Kobayashi and colleagues announce synthesis of tetrakis(3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)borate ("BARF"). ^[8]

Computer science

• January 24 – Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States. It will be the first successful PC to use a graphical user interface.
• The first edition of language documentation Common Lisp the Language (known as CLtL1) is published in the United States.

History of science

• Robert Gwyn Macfarlane publishes Alexander Fleming: The Man and the Myth.

Paleontology

• The fossil skeleton of the hominid "Turkana Boy" is discovered in Kenya.

Physiology and medicine

• January – Seasonal affective disorder is formally described and named by Norman E. Rosenthal MD and colleagues in the United States as a mood disorder. ^[9]
• February 3 – Dr John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.
• April 22 – Dr Robert Gallo and Margaret Heckler of United States Public Health Service announce the discovery of HTLV-III as the virus that causes AIDS.
• May 10 – Barbara H. Bowman and Oliver Smithies show that variations in haptoglobins are due to genetic polymorphisms. ^[10]

Technology

• May 5 – Itaipu Dam in South America begins to generate hydroelectricity.
• July 21 – In Jackson, Michigan, a factory robot crushes a worker against a safety bar in apparently the first robot-related death in the United States.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer
  • Chemistry – Robert Bruce Merrifield
  • Medicine – Niels K. Jerne, Georges J. F. Köhler, César Milstein
• Turing Award – Niklaus Wirth

Births

• May 14 – Mark Zuckerberg, American computer programmer and entrepreneur, co-founder of social media platform Facebook.
• December 2 – Maryna Viazovska, Ukrainian-born mathematician. ^[11]

Deaths

• January 8 – Eerik Kumari (b. 1912), Estonian ornithologist and academic.
• February 21 – Anna Baetjer (b. 1899), American toxicologist.
• April 8 – Pyotr Kapitsa (b. 1894), Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.
• April 15 – Grete Hermann (b. 1901), German mathematician and philosopher.
• May 13 – Stanislaw Ulam (b. 1909), Polish American mathematician.
• May 24 – Sir Stanley Hooker (b. 1907), English aeronautical engineer.
• August 6 – Abraham Lilienfeld (b. 1920), American epidemiologist.
• August 11 – George Streisinger (b. 1927), Hungarian American molecular biologist, the first person to clone a vertebrate.
• October 20 – Paul Dirac (b. 1902), English-born physicist.
• November 20 – Charles C. Conley (b. 1933), American mathematician working on dynamical systems.
• December 20 – Stanley Milgram (b. 1933), American social psychologist.

References

1. Brown, David (2001-06-19). "The 'recipe for disaster' that killed 80 and left a £5bn bill". The Daily Telegraph . London. Retrieved 2014-12-02.
2. Greider, Carol W.; Blackburn, Elizabeth H. (December 1985). "Identification of a Specific Telomere Terminal Transferase Activity in Tetrahymena Extracts". Cell . 43 (2:1): 405–13. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(85)90170-9 . PMID   3907856.
3. Willadsen, S. M. (1986). "Nuclear transplantation in sheep embryos". Nature . 320 (6057): 63–65. Bibcode:1986Natur.320...63W. doi:10.1038/320063a0. PMID   3951549. S2CID   4257911.
4. Willadsen, S. M. (1989). "Cloning of sheep and cow embryos". Genome . 31 (2): 956–62. doi:10.1139/g89-167. PMID   2698854.
5. Kramer, P.; Neri, R. (1984). "On periodic and non-periodic space fillings of E^m obtained by projection". Acta Crystallographica. A40 (5): 580. Bibcode:1984AcCrA..40..580K. doi:10.1107/S0108767384001203.
6. Shechtman, D.; Blech, I.; Gratias, D.; Cahn, J. (1984). "Metallic Phase with Long-Range Orientational Order and No Translational Symmetry". Physical Review Letters . 53 (20): 1951–4. Bibcode:1984PhRvL..53.1951S. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.53.1951 .
7. Levine, Dov; Steinhardt, Paul Joseph (1984). "Quasicrystals: A New Class of Ordered Structures". Physical Review Letters. 53 (26): 2477–80. Bibcode:1984PhRvL..53.2477L. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.53.2477 .
8. Nishida, H.; Takada, N.; Yoshimura, M.; Sonods, T.; Kobayshi, H. (1984). "Tetrakis(3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)borate: Highly Lipophilic Stable Anionic Agent for Solvent-Extraction of Cations". Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan . 57 (9): 2600–2604. doi:10.1246/bcsj.57.2600.
9. Rosenthal, N. E.; et al. (January 1984). "Seasonal affective disorder: a description of the syndrome and preliminary findings with light therapy". Archives of General Psychiatry. 41 (1): 72–80. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1984.01790120076010. PMC   2686645 . PMID   6581756.
10. Maeda, Nobuyo; Yang, Funmei; Barnett, Don R.; Bowman, Barbara H.; Smithies, Oliver (1984). "Duplication within the haptoglobin Hp 2 gene". Nature. 309 (5964): 131–135. Bibcode:1984Natur.309..131M. doi:10.1038/309131a0. PMID   6325933. S2CID   4368535.
11. "Ukrainian Viazovska wins Fields Medal 2022". www.ukrinform.net. July 2022. Archived from the original on 2022-07-07. Retrieved 2022-07-09.