1971 in science

none 1971 science 1971 The year 1971 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. Astronomy and space exploration January 31 – Apollo program: Astronauts aboard Apollo 14 lift off for a mission to the Moon. February 5 – Apollo 14 lands on the Moon. February 9 – Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third crewed Moon landing. May 19 – Mars probe program: Mars 2 is launched by the Soviet Union. May 30 – Mariner program: Mariner 9 is launched toward Mars. June 30 – The crew of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply leaks out through a faulty valve during re-entry preparations, the only human deaths to occur outside Earth's atmosphere. July 26 – Apollo program: Launch of Apollo 15. On July 31 the Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover a day after landing on the Moon's surface. November 13 – Mariner program: Mariner 9 enters Mars orbit. Biology July – Francis G. Howarth discovers communities of specialized thermophile cave animals living in lava tubes at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.Cavernicoles in Lava Tubes on the Island of Hawaii Francis G. Howarth Science 175 4019 1972-01-21 325–326 1733505 10.1126/science.175.4019.325 17814543 1972Sci...175..325H 36219772 C. A. W. Jeekel publishes Nomenclator Generum et Familiarum Diplopodorum. John O'Keefe discovers place cells in the mammalian brain.O'Keefe John Dostrovsky Jonathan 1971 The hippocampus as a spatial map: preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat Brain Research 34 1 171–175 10.1016/0006-8993(71)90358-1 5124915Binder Marc D Encyclopedia of Neuroscience https://archive.org/details/encyclopedianeur00bind limited 2009 Springer 978-3-540-23735-8 3166 Computer science July 4 – Michael S. Hart posts the first e-book, a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, on the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign's mainframe computer, the origin of Project Gutenberg.https://www.gutenberg.org/about/background/history_and_philosophy.html Project Gutenberg The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg Michael Hart August 1992 2011-10-05. November 3 – The Unix Programmer's Manual is published. November 15 – Intel release the world's first microprocessor, the 4004. November/December – Computer Space is released, the first arcade video game. Ray Tomlinson sends the first ARPAnet e-mail between host computers, at BBN, Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the first use of the @ sign in an address.Ray Tomlinson The First Network Email http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html 2011-10-05 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20060506003539/http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html 2006-05-06 Kenbak-1 goes on sale, considered to be the world's first personal computer by the Computer History Museum and the American Computer Museum. The earliest floppy disks, 8 inches in diameter, become commercially available as components of products shipped by IBM, their inventor. Conservation February 2 – The international Ramsar Convention for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands is signed in Ramsar, Mazandaran, Iran. Earth sciences February 9 – The San Fernando (Sylmar) earthquake occurs in southern California with a magnitude of 6.6 and a perceived intensity of XI (extreme) on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale. Mathematics Stephen Cook introduces the concept of NP-completeness in computational complexity theory at the 3rd Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing.Cook Stephen 1971 The complexity of theorem proving procedures http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&id=805047 Proceedings of the Third Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing 151–158 10.1145/800157.805047 9781450374644 7573663 Daniel Quillen publishes a proof of the Adams conjecture.Quillen Daniel The Adams Conjecture 10.1016/0040-9383(71)90018-8 0279804 1971 Topology 0040-9383 10 67–80 free Steven Takiff introduces Takiff algebras.Steven Takiff Takiff S. J. Rings of invariant polynomials for a class of Lie algebras 1995803 10.2307/1995803 0281839 1971 Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 0002-9947 160 249–262 free The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is first presented explicitly, by Hilary Putnam in his book Philosophy of Logic. Medicine April 1 – Alternating hemiplegia of childhood is first characterized.Verret Simon Steele John C. Alternating Hemiplegia in Childhood: A Report of Eight Patients with Complicated Migraine Beginning in Infancy Pediatrics 1971-04-01 47 4 675–80 10.1542/peds.47.4.675 5089756 10993002 October 1 – Godfrey Hounsfield's invention, X-ray computed tomography, is first used on a patient with a cerebral cyst at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London.Beckmann E. C. CT scanning: the early days 10.1259/bjr/29444122 British Journal of Radiology 79 937 5–8 2006 16421398 Boston Women's Health Book Collective publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves in the U.S. E. G. L. Bywaters characterizes adult-onset Still's disease, a rare form of inflammatory arthritis.Bywaters E. G. L. Still's disease in the adult Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 30 2 121–33 March 1971 5315135 1005739 10.1136/ard.30.2.121 Smallpox is eradicated from the Americas.http://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10798%3Aamericas-free-of-rubella&catid=740%3Anews-press-releases&Itemid=1926&lang=en Americas region is declared the world's first to eliminate rubella WHO 2015-04-30 2015-04-30 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20150518102827/http://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10798%3Aamericas-free-of-rubella&catid=740%3Anews-press-releases&Itemid=1926&lang=en 2015-05-18 Paleontology August 3 – The Fighting Dinosaurs, a fossil specimen featuring a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops in combat, is first located in the Late Cretaceous Djadochta Formation of Mongolia by a Polish-Mongolian team.Kielan-Jaworowska Z. Barsbold R. 1972 Narrative of the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions, 1967-1971 Palaeontologia Polonica 27 1−12 http://www.palaeontologia.pan.pl/Archive/1972-27_5-13_1-2.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20240520234553/http://www.palaeontologia.pan.pl/Archive/1972-27_5-13_1-2.pdf 2024-05-20 dead Physics Roger Penrose proposes the Penrose process.R. Penrose R. M. Floyd Extraction of Rotational Energy from a Black Hole Nature Physical Science 229 6 177 1971 10.1038/physci229177a0 1971NPhS..229..177P Psychology August 14–20 – Stanford prison experiment. Konrad Lorenz publishes Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume II. Technology Richard H. Frenkiel, Joel S. Engel and Philip T. Porter of Bell Labs in the United States set out the parameters for a practical cellular telephone network. J. J. Stiffler publishes his book Theory of Synchronous Communications and edits a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Communication Technology on error correction codes. Institutions Paris Descartes University begins to function in continuation of the medical department of the University of Paris. Awards Nobel Prizes Physics – Dennis Gabor Chemistry – Gerhard Herzberg Medicine – Earl W Sutherland, Jr Turing Award – John McCarthy Births May 29 – Howard Gobioff (d. 2008), American computer scientist. June 28 – Elon Musk, South African-born Canadian-American entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and investor. July 4 – Sivakumar Veerasamy, Indian plant geneticist. July 21 – Sara Seager, Canadian-American astrophysicist. August 2 – Ruth Lawrence, English-born mathematician. November 18 – Karl Deisseroth, American optogeneticist, Nobel Prize laureate.Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2026/press-release/ 2026-10-05 NobelPrize.org en-US https://web.archive.org/web/20261005094452/https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2026/press-release/ 2026-10-05 live Deaths January 23 – Fritz Feigl (b. 1891), Austrian-born Brazilian chemist January 25 – Donald Winnicott (b. 1896), English child psychiatrist. February 16 – Heinrich Willi (b. 1900), Swiss pediatrician. February 25 – Theodor Svedberg (b. 1884), Swedish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate March 11 – Philo T. Farnsworth (b. 1906), American television pioneer. April 1 – Dame Kathleen Lonsdale (b. 1903), Irish-born crystallographer. April 6 – Margaret Newton (b. 1887), Canadian plant pathologist. April 12 – Igor Tamm (b. 1895), Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate June 6 – Edward Andrade (b. 1887), English physicist. June 15 Hillel Oppenheimer (b. 1899), German-born Israeli botanist. Wendell Meredith Stanley (b. 1904), American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate. June 30 – Soviet cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky (b. 1928) Vladislav Volkov (b. 1935) Viktor Patsayev (b. 1933) September 15 – Benno Mengele (b. 1898), Austrian electrical engineer References Category:20th century in science Category:1970s in science