1956 in science

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The year 1956 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• March – Denham Harman proposes the free-radical theory of aging.^[1]
• Wesley K. Whitten reports developing eight-cell mouse ova to blastocyst stage in vitro.^[2]

Climatology

• May – Gilbert Plass publishes his seminal article "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change".^[3]

Computer science

• September 13 – The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team led by Reynold B. Johnson.

Mathematics

• December – Martin Gardner begins his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.

Medicine

• May 1 – Minamata disease epidemic is identified in Japan.
• November – The classic definition of obesity hypoventilation syndrome is published.^[4]
• Asian flu pandemic originates in China.

Physics

• Existence of the antineutrino is experimentally confirmed by the Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment carried out by Clyde L. Cowan and Frederick Reines.^[5]
• Existence of the antineutron is experimentally confirmed by University of California, Berkeley physicist Bruce Cork.
• DIDO heavy water enriched uranium nuclear reactor begins operation at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Oxfordshire.
• November 15 – Cooper pairs are first described by Leon Cooper.^[6]

Psychology

• January 1 – Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter's book When Prophecy Fails provides a classic study of disconfirmed expectancy.

Technology

• April 14 – 2-inch quadruplex videotape, the first practical and commercially successful analog recording videotape format, is released for the broadcast television industry by Ampex of Redwood City, California.^[7][8]
• August 27 – Calder Hall nuclear power station in England is first connected to the National Grid. This Magnox plant is the world's first nuclear power plant to deliver electricity in commercial quantities.^[9] Official opening is on October 17.^[10]
• November 11 – First flight of Convair B-58, the first supersonic jet bomber capable of Mach 2 flight,^[11] designed by Robert H. Widmer.
• First Chamberlin electro-mechanical keyboard instrument, developed and patented by Wisconsin inventor Harry Chamberlin, is introduced.^[12]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain
  • Chemistry – Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov
  • Medicine – André Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann, Dickinson W. Richards

Births

• April 16 – David M. Brown (died 2003), American astronaut.
• April 19 – Anne Glover, Scottish biologist.
• May 20 – Marlene Zuk, American biologist.
• October 19 – Carlo Urbani (died 2003), Italian physician, discoverer of SARS.

Deaths

• February 3 – Émile Borel (born 1871), French mathematician.
• March 17 – Irène Joliot-Curie (born 1897), French radiochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• March 22 – George Sarton (born 1884), Belgian American historian of science.
• August 25 – Alfred Kinsey (born 1894), American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University (Bloomington).
• September 22 – Frederick Soddy (born 1877), English radiochemist.
• October 30 – María Teresa Ferrari (born 1887), Argentine physician.
• November 10 – Henry Luke Bolley (born 1865), American plant pathologist.

References

1. Harman, Denham (1956). "Aging: a theory based on free radical and radiation chemistry". Journal of Gerontology 11 (3): 298–300. doi:10.1093/geronj/11.3.298. PMID 13332224.
2. Whitten, W. K. (14 January 1956). "Culture of Tubal Mouse Ova" (PDF). Nature 177 (4498): 96. doi:10.1038/177096a0. Retrieved 2011-08-11.
3. Plass, Gilbert N. (1956). "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change". Tellus 8 (2): 140–54. doi:10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x. Retrieved 2013-12-12.
4. Burwell, C. Sidney; Robin, Eugene D.; Whaley, Robert D.; Bicklemann, Albert G.; (1956). "Extreme obesity associated with alveolar hypoventilation – a Pickwickian syndrome". The American Journal of Medicine 21 (5): 811–8. doi:10.1016/0002-9343(56)90094-8. PMID 13362309. Retrieved 2014-07-03. Reproduced as Burwell, C.S.; Robin, E. D.; Whaley, R. D.; Bicklemann, A. G.; (1994). "Extreme obesity associated with alveolar hypoventilation; a Pickwickian syndrome". Obesity Research 2 (4): 390–7. doi:10.1002/j.1550-8528.1994.tb00084.x. PMID 16353591.
5. "The Reines-Cowan Experiments: Detecting the Poltergeist" (PDF). Los Alamos Science 25: 3. 1997.
6. Cooper, Leon N. (1956). "Bound electron pairs in a degenerate Fermi gas" (PDF). Physical Review 104 (4): 1189–1190. Bibcode:1956PhRv..104.1189C. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.104.1189. Retrieved 2016-01-04.
7. Bensinger, Charles (1981). "All About Videotape". VideoPreservation Website. Retrieved 2012-04-14.
8. "Some Quad History". Quad Videotape Group. Retrieved 2012-04-14.
9. "Calder Hall Power Station". The Engineer. 5 October 1956.
10. "Sellafield Sites, Site history". Retrieved 2007-12-04.
11. Wilson, Stewart (2000). Combat Aircraft since 1945. Fyshwick, ACT, Australia: Aerospace Publications Pty Ltd. p. 38. ISBN 1-875671-50-1.
12. Epand, Len (April 1976). "A Phantom Orchestra at Your Fingertips" (PDF). Crawdaddy!: A27–A28. Retrieved 2011-12-16.