1955 in science
Overview of the events of 1955 in science
The year 1955 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.
Astronomy and space sciences
Biochemistry
Chemistry
Climatology
August 9 – Gilbert Plass submits his seminal article "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change".[ 15]
Computer science
Earth sciences
History of science and technology
Mathematics
Physics
Physiology and medicine
Technology
January 5 – Strömsund Bridge in Sweden completed, the first significant cable-stayed bridge of the modern era.[ 42]
July 17 – The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially, partially powering Arco, Idaho , from the U.S. National Reactor Testing Station ; on July 18, Schenectady, New York , receives power from a prototype nuclear submarine reactor at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory .[ 5]
August 24 – The first accurate atomic clock , a caesium standard based on a certain transition of the caesium-133 atom, is built by Louis Essen with J. V. L. Parry at the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) .[ 20] [ 43]
December 12 – Christopher Cockerell is granted a United Kingdom patent for his design of hovercraft .
Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral is granted a patent for the Velcro fabric hook-and-loop fastener.[ 44]
Tappan introduce the first domestic microwave oven , in the United States.[ 5]
American electrical engineer Eugene Polley invents the Zenith Flash-Matic, the first wireless television remote control .[ 45] [ 46]
Zoology
Events
Publications
Awards
Births
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
January 1 – Simon Schaffer , English historian of science.
January 6 – Susan B. Horwitz (died 2014 ), American computer scientist and academic.
January 17 – Katalin Karikó , Hungarian-born biochemist, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine .[ 48]
January 24 – Alan Sokal , American mathematical physicist and proponent of scientific objectivity .
February 3 – Sue Ion , born Susan Burrows, English nuclear scientist .
February 24 – Steve Jobs (died 2011 ), American computing entrepreneur.
April 11 – Piers Sellers (died 2016 ), English-born astronaut and climate scientist.
April 20 – Svante Pääbo , Swedish evolutionary geneticist , winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
April 30 – Francis Muguet (died 2009 ), French chemist and advocate of open access to information.
May 30 – Jacqueline McGlade , British-born marine biologist and pioneer of environmental informatics .
June 8 – Tim Berners-Lee , English creator of the World Wide Web .[ 49]
June 11 – Duncan Steel , English/Australasian space scientist .
October 2 – Nancy Rothwell , English physiologist .
October 28 – Bill Gates , American software designer and entrepreneur.
November 4 – David Julius , American physiologist, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
December 22 – Thomas C. Südhof , German-born biochemist , winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé , Spanish theoretical physicist.
Deaths
February 2 – Oswald Avery (born 1877 ), Canadian-American bacteriologist .
March 11 – Sir Alexander Fleming (born 1881 ), British bacteriologist, winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine .
March 15 – Michele Besso (born 1873 ), Swiss engineer, confidant of Einstein.
April 10 – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , SJ (born 1881), French-born paleontologist and philosopher .
April 17 – Eduard Pernkopf (born 1888 ), Austrian anatomist .
April 18 – Albert Einstein (born 1879 ), German-born theoretical physicist, winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics .
June 12 – Redcliffe N. Salaman (born 1874 ), English botanist .
July 21 – J. B. Christopherson (born 1868 ), English physician .
August 11 – Robert W. Wood (born 1868), American optical physicist .
August 12 – James B. Sumner (born 1887 ), American winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry .
November 25 – Sir Arthur Tansley (born 1871 ), English botanist and ecologist .
December 13 – Antonio Egas Moniz (born 1874), Portuguese neurologist , winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
References
^ Hoyle, F.; Schwarzschild, M. (1955). "On the Evolution of Type II Stars". The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series . 2 : 1–40. Bibcode :1955ApJS....2....1H . doi :10.1086/190015 .
^ Burbidge, E. Margaret (1999). "Hoyle & Schwarzschild's Analysis of the Evolution of Population II Stars". The Astrophysical Journal . 525C : 639. Bibcode :1999ApJ...525C.639B .
^ Burke, B. F.; Franklin, K. L. (1955). "Observations of a variable radio source associated with the planet Jupiter". Journal of Geophysical Research . 60 (2): 213–217. Bibcode :1955JGR....60..213B . doi :10.1029/JZ060i002p00213 .
^ "Stand By Satellite For Take OffP" . Popular Mechanics . Hearst Magazines. July 1957. pp. 65–69, 216.
^ a b c d e f g h i j "1955". Houghton Mifflin Guide to Science & Technology .
^ Franklin, Rosalind E. (1955). "Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus". Nature . 175 (4452): 379–381. Bibcode :1955Natur.175..379F . doi :10.1038/175379a0 . PMID 14356181 . S2CID 1109700 .
^ Tjio, J.-H.; Levan, A. (1956). "The chromosome number of man" . Hereditas . 42 (1–2): 1–6. doi :10.1111/j.1601-5223.1956.tb03010.x . PMID 345813 .
^ Harper, Peter S. (2006). "The discovery of the human chromosome number in Lund, 1955–1956" . Human Genetics . 119 (1–2): 226–232. doi :10.1007/s00439-005-0121-x . PMID 16463025 . S2CID 12237105 . Retrieved 2011-08-18 .
^ Schafer, W. (1955). "Vergleichende sero-immunologische Untersuchungen über die Viren der Influenza und klassischen Geflügelpest" [Comparative sero-immunological studies on the viruses of influenza and classical avian influenza]. Zeitschrift für Naturforschung . 10 (2): 81–91. doi :10.1515/znb-1955-0205 . S2CID 94565421 .
^ Lycett, Samantha J.; Duchatel, Florian; Digard, Paul (2019-06-24). "A brief history of bird flu" . Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences . 374 (1775): 20180257. doi :10.1098/rstb.2018.0257 . ISSN 0962-8436 . PMC 6553608 . PMID 31056053 .
^ Applied for in 1953. Greenwood, David (21 February 2008). Antimicrobial Drugs: Chronicle of a Twentieth Century Medical Triumph . Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199534845 – via Google Books. McFaul, Thomas R.; Brunsting, Al (2014). God Is Here to Stay: Science, Evolution, and Belief in God . Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9781630871802 – via Google Books.
^ Ghiorso, A.; Harvey, B.; Choppin, G.; Thompson, S.; Seaborg, G. (1955). "New Element Mendelevium, Atomic Number 101" . Physical Review . 98 (5): 1518–19. Bibcode :1955PhRv...98.1518G . doi :10.1103/PhysRev.98.1518 .
^
^ Calderbank, A.; et al. (1978). "Chapter 9: Bipyridylium herbicides". In Peacock, F. C. (ed.). Jealott's Hill: Fifty years of Agricultural Research 1928-1978 . Imperial Chemical Industries. pp. 67–86. ISBN 0901747017 .
^ Plass, Gilbert N. (May 1956). "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change". Tellus . 8 (2): 140–54. Bibcode :1956Tell....8..140P . doi :10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x .
^ Weik, Martin H. (1961). "The ENIAC Story" . Ftp.arl.mil. Archived from the original on 2011-08-14. Retrieved 2011-08-18 .
^ Spira, Jonathan B. (2011). Overload! How Too Much Information is Hazardous to your Organization . Wiley. p. 51. ISBN 978-1118064177 . Retrieved 2013-06-08 .
^ Reilly, Edwin D. (2013). Milestones in Computer Science and Information Technology . Greenwood. p. 274. ISBN 978-1573565219 . Retrieved 2013-06-08 .
^ Patterson, C. (1956). "Age of meteorites and the Earth". Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta . 10 (4): 230–237. Bibcode :1956GeCoA..10..230P . doi :10.1016/0016-7037(56)90036-9 .
^ a b Winston, Robert , ed. (2013). "1955". Science Year by Year . London: Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 978-1-4093-1613-8 .
^ Rix, Michael (October 1955). "Industrial Archaeology". The Amateur Historian . 2 (8): 225–9.
^ Cox, D. R. (1955). "Some Statistical Methods Connected with Series of Events". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society . 17 (2): 129–164. doi :10.1111/j.2517-6161.1955.tb00188.x .
^ Brauer, R. ; Fowler, K. A. (1955). "On groups of even order". Annals of Mathematics . 2nd series. 62 (3): 565–583. doi :10.2307/1970080 . ISSN 0003-486X . JSTOR 1970080 . MR 0074414 . S2CID 48846261 .
^ Chevalley, Claude (1955). "Sur certains groupes simples" . Tohoku Mathematical Journal . 2nd series. 7 (1–2): 14–66. doi :10.2748/tmj/1178245104 . ISSN 0040-8735 . MR 0073602 .
^ Gilbert, E. (1955), Theory of shuffling , Technical memorandum, Bell Labs .
^ "Canadian Mathematical Bulletin" . Canadian Mathematical Society. 1967: 764.
^ Roth, K. F. (1955). "Rational approximations to algebraic numbers". Mathematika . 2 : 1–20, 168. doi :10.1112/S0025579300000644 . ISSN 0025-5793 . MR 0072182 .
^ Taniyama, Yutaka (1956), "Problem 12", Sugaku (in Japanese), 7 : 269
^ Hopkins, H. H.; Kapany, N. S. (1955). "Transparent fibres for the transmission of optical images". Optica Acta . 1 (4): 164–170. Bibcode :1955AcOpt...1..164H . doi :10.1080/713818685 .
^ Rotblat, Joseph (March 1955). "The Hydrogen-Uranium Bomb". Atomic Scientists Journal . 4 : 224.
^ "Early-Warning Radars (part 3)" . Lincoln Laboratory. Archived from the original on 2013-03-12. Retrieved 2013-01-19 .
^ Müller, Erwin W.; Bahadur, Kanwar (1956). "Field Ionization of gases at a metal surface and the resolution of the field ion microscope". Physical Review . 102 (3): 624–631. Bibcode :1956PhRv..102..624M . doi :10.1103/physrev.102.624 .
^ Jacoby, Mitch (2008-11-28). "Atomic Imaging Turns 50" . Chemical & Engineering News . 83 (48): 13–16.
^ Haroldsen, Ray. The Story of the Borax Nuclear Reactor and the EBR-I Meltdown . ISBN 978-1-56684-706-3 .
^ Alvarez, L. W. (1987). Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist . Basic Books . pp. 185–9. ISBN 0-465-00115-7 .
^ "Science Places Liverpool" . 2008. Retrieved 2011-03-20 .
^ Franklin D. Roosevelt is one of the most famous polio victims.) By the early 1950s, polio epidemics had been increasing in severity ... Archived 2015-04-07 at the Wayback Machine history1900s.about.com
^ Beecher, Henry K. (1955). "The Powerful Placebo". Journal of the American Medical Association . 159 (17): 1602–1606. doi :10.1001/jama.1955.02960340022006 . PMID 13271123 .
^ Acheson, E. D. (1959). "The clinical syndrome variously called benign myalgic encephalomyelitis, Iceland disease and epidemic neurоmyasthaenia" (PDF) . The American Journal of Medicine . 26 (4): 569–95. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.534.4761 . doi :10.1016/0002-9343(59)90280-3 . PMID 13637100 . Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-21. Retrieved 2011-07-29 .
^ Banoth, M.; Naru, R. R.; Inamdar, M. B.; Chowhan, A. K. (2018). "Familial Swyer syndrome: a rare genetic entity". Gynecological Endocrinology . 34 (5): 389–393. doi :10.1080/09513590.2017.1393662 . PMID 29069951 . S2CID 4452231 . {{cite journal }}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link )
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^ "Strömsund Bridge (1955)" . Structurae . Retrieved 2010-10-02 .
^ Essen, L.; Parry, J. V. L. (13 August 1955). "An Atomic Standard of Frequency and Time Interval: A Cæsium Resonator". Nature . 176 (4476): 280–2. Bibcode :1955Natur.176..280E . doi :10.1038/176280a0 . S2CID 4191481 .
^ Stephens, Thomas (2007-01-04). "How a Swiss invention hooked the world" . swissinfo.ch. Retrieved 2011-12-16 .
^ "Inventor of the TV remote control dies" . Chicago Tribune . 2012-05-22. Archived from the original on 2012-05-23. Retrieved 2012-05-23 .
^ "TV remote control inventor Eugene Polley dies at 96" . BBC News . 2012-05-22. Retrieved 2012-05-23 .
^ Garfield, Eugene (15 July 1955). "Citation indexes for science: a new dimension in documentation through association of ideas" (PDF) . Science . 122 (3159): 108–111. Bibcode :1955Sci...122..108G . doi :10.1126/science.122.3159.108 . PMID 14385826 . Retrieved 2011-07-29 . [permanent dead link ]
^ Gallagher, James (2023-10-02). "Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines" . BBC News . Retrieved 2023-10-02 .
^ "Tim Berners-Lee | Biography, Education, Internet, Contributions, & Facts | Britannica" . www.britannica.com . Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 29 March 2023 .