1954 in science
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The year 1954 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
- November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite crashes through a roof and hits Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio, giving her a bad bruise; the first known modern case of a human being hit by a space rock.
Biology
- January 10 – Last confirmed specimen of a Caspian tiger is killed, in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet Dag Mountains of Turkmenistan.[1]
- Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.[2][3]
- Heinz Sielmann makes the pioneering nature documentary about woodpeckers, Zimmerleute des Waldes ("Carpenters of the forest").
- Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck propose the species name bonobo for what was previously known as the pygmy chimpanzee.[4]
Chemistry
- Publication of the first analysis of the three-dimensional molecular structure of vitamin B12 by a group including Dorothy Hodgkin, and utilising computer analysis provided by Kenneth Nyitray Trueblood.[5][6]
- Strychnine total synthesis is first achieved in the laboratory by Robert Burns Woodward's team at Harvard.[7][8][9][10]
- The Wittig reaction is discovered by German chemist Georg Wittig.
Computer science
- January – The TRADIC Phase One computer is completed at Bell Labs in the United States, a candidate to be regarded as the first transistor computer.[11]
- January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.
Geology
- December 31 – The first specimens of the mineral benstonite are collected by Orlando J. Benston in the Magnet Cove igneous complex of Arkansas.[12]
History of science
- Joseph Needham begins publication of Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge University Press).
- A History of Technology, edited by Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard and A. R. Hall, begins publication (Oxford University Press).
Mathematics
- January 6 – The Luhn algorithm, devised by IBM information scientist Hans Peter Luhn, is described in a United States patent.[13]
- Klaus Roth publishes a paper[14] laying the foundations for modern discrepancy theory.
- Leonard Jimmie Savage publishes Foundations of Statistics, promoting Bayesian statistics.
Medicine
- February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- August 10 – British epidemiologist Richard Doll submits a study on the risk to workers in asbestos manufacture of mortality from lung cancer.[15]
- The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris.
- December 23 – Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston carries out the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins.[16]
- The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine (U.S.) and Largactil (U.K.)
- The sucrose gap is introduced by Robert Stämpfli for the reliable measurement of action potential in nerve fibers.[17][18]
Metrology
- 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures proposes the six original SI base units.
- Alexander Macmillan publishes the "Macmillan correction" to account for errors in the calculation of velocity of an object moving along a gradient due to viscous effects and wall proximity.
Physics
- January 2 – Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany at Imperial College London report achieving low-loss light transmission through a 75 cm long optical fiber bundle.[19]
- March 1 – Castle Bravo: United States carries out a thermonuclear weapon test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
- September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.[20]
- First tokamak built, in the Soviet Union.[21]
Psychology
- Summer – Robbers Cave Experiment carried out by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif.[22]
- Man Meets Dog is published by Konrad Lorenz.
Technology
- June 26 – Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the first civilian nuclear power station, is commissioned in the Soviet Union.[23]
- June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.[24]
- September 30 – The submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy.
- October 18 – Texas Instruments announces development of the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, manufactured in Indianapolis; it goes on sale the following month.
- December 16 – The first synthetic diamond is produced.[25]
- New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat.[26]
- The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.[27]
- Staley T. McBrayer invents the Vanguard web offset press for newspaper printing in Fort Worth, Texas.[28]
- The angle grinder is invented by German company Ackermann + Schmitt (Flex-Elektrowerkzeuge).
Awards
- Fields Prize in Mathematics: Kunihiko Kodaira and Jean-Pierre Serre, the latter being the youngest-ever winner, at age 27
- Nobel Prizes