1963 in science

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The year 1963 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 4 – Soviet Luna reaches Earth orbit but fails to reach the moon.
• May 15 – Mercury program: NASA launches the last mission of the program Mercury 9. (On June 12 NASA Administrator James E. Webb tells Congress the program is complete.)
• November 1 – The Arecibo Observatory, with the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, officially opens in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Biology

• Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone".
• Molecular biologist Emile Zuckerkandl and physical chemist Linus Pauling introduce the term paleogenetics.^[1]
• Konrad Lorenz publishes On Aggression (Das sogenannte Böse: Zur Naturgeschichte der Agression).
• Niko Tinbergen poses his four questions to be asked of any animal behavior.^[2]

Cartography

• Robinson projection devised by Arthur H. Robinson.^[3]

Earth sciences

• September 7 – British geophysicists Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews publish proof of seafloor spreading on the Atlantic Ocean floor.^[4][5]
• November 14 – The Icelandic volcanic island of Surtsey appears above sea level.

History of science and technology

• April 1 – Industrial Monuments Survey for the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Great Britain) commenced by Rex Wailes.
• Kenneth Hudson's Industrial Archaeology: an introduction published in London.

Mathematics

• Edward Lorenz publishes his discovery of the 'butterfly effect', significant in the development of chaos theory.^[6]

Medicine

• Thomas Starzl performs the first liver transplantation, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.^[7]
• James D. Hardy performs the first lung transplantation.^[7]
• June – Guy Alexandre performs the first kidney transplantation from a heart-beating, brain-dead donor, at Saint Pierre Hospital, Leuven, Belgium.^[7]

Paleontology

• The type species of the early dinosaur Herrerasaurus, Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis from the north of Argentina, is described by Osvaldo Reig.^[8]

Physics

• David H. Frisch and J. H. Smith prove radioactive decay of mesons is slowed by their motion.^[9] (See Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.)

Psychology

• Stanley Milgram publishes the results of his shock experiment on obedience to authority figures.^[10]

Technology

• Lava lamp invented by Edward Craven Walker.
• Mellotron Mark I electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard, developed and built in Aston, Birmingham, England, is marketed.

Events

• November 23 – First episode of science fiction television series Doctor Who broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom.^[11][12][13]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen
  • Chemistry – Karl Ziegler, Giulio Natta
  • Medicine – Sir John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding Huxley

Births

• January 4 – May-Britt Moser, Norwegian neuroscientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• February 9 – Brian Greene, American theoretical physicist.
• February 10 – Vivian Wing-Wah Yam, Hong Kong chemist working on OLEDs.
• W. Tecumseh Fitch, American-born evolutionary biologist.
• Daniel Jackson, English-born American computer scientist.

Deaths

• January 28 – Jean Piccard (born 1884), Swiss-born American chemist and explorer.
• April 6 – Otto Struve (born 1897), Russian astronomer.
• May 19 – Walter Russell (born 1871), American polymath.
• August 30 – Marietta Pallis (born 1882), British ecologist.
• October 13 – Alan A. Griffith (born 1893), English stress engineer.
• October 2 – Olga Lepeshinskaya (born 1871), Soviet Lysenkoist biologist.
• October 25 – Karl von Terzaghi (born 1883), Austrian "father of soil mechanics".

References

1. Pauling, L.; Zuckerkandl, E. (1963). "Chemical paleogenetics: molecular restoration studies of extinct forms of life". Acta Chemica Scandinavica 17: 89. doi:10.3891/acta.chem.scand.17s-0009.
2. Tinbergen, Niko (1963). "On Aims and Methods in Ethology" (PDF). Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 20: 410–433. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0310.1963.tb01161.x.
3. Snyder, John P. (1993). Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-76747-7.
4. The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
5. Vine, F. J.; Matthews, D. H. (1963). "Magnetic Anomalies Over Oceanic Ridges" (PDF). Nature 199 (4897): 947–949. Bibcode:1963Natur.199..947V. doi:10.1038/199947a0.
6. Lorenz, Edward N. (March 1963). "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow". Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 20 (2): 130–141. Bibcode:1963JAtS...20..130L. doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020<0130:DNF>2.0.CO;2. Retrieved 2010-06-03.
7. Machado, Calixto (2005). "The first organ transplant from a brain-dead donor". Neurology 64 (11): 1938–42. doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000163515.09793.cb.
8. Reig, O. A. (1963). "La presencia de dinosaurios saurisquios en los "Estratos de Ischigualasto" (Mesotriásico Superior) de las provincias de San Juan y La Rioja (República Argentina)". Ameghiniana (in Spanish) 3 (1): 3–20.
9. American Journal of Physics 31: 342-355.
10. "Behavioral Study of Obedience". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (4): 371–378. October 1963. doi:10.1037/h0040525. PMID 14049516.
11. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
12. Howe, David J.; Stammers, Mark; Walker, Stephen James (1994). The Handbook: The First Doctor — The William Hartnell Years 1963–1966. London: Virgin Books. p. 54. ISBN 0-426-20430-1.
13. "An Unearthly Child". Doctor Who: The Classic Series. BBC. 1995–2003. Retrieved 2012-06-08.