1973 in science

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The year 1973 in science and technology involved one significant event, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• March 7 – Comet Kohoutek is discovered
• April 6 – Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft
• May 14 – Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.
• Solar eclipse of June 30, 1973 – Very long total solar eclipse visible in NE South America, the Atlantic, and central Africa. During the entire Second Millennium, only seven total solar eclipses exceed seven minutes of totality; this is the last. Observers aboard a Concorde jet are able to stretch totality to about 74 minutes by flying along the path of the moon's umbra.
• July 25 – Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.
• November 3 – Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury (on March 29, 1974 it became the first space probe to reach that planet).
• December 3 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
• December 7 – The "Big Ear" at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory begins a full-time search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) radio survey, running continuously until 1995.

Biology

• December 28 – Endangered Species Act signed into law in the United States.

Cartography

• Waldo R. Tobler introduces the Tobler hyperelliptical projection.

Chemistry

• A successful method of Vitamin B₁₂ total synthesis is reported by the groups of Robert Burns Woodward and Albert Eschenmoser.^[1][2]

Computer science

• November 21 – The sci-fi movie Westworld is the first feature film to use digital image processing.

Cryptography

• October – Asymmetric key algorithms for public-key cryptography developed by James H. Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm J. Williamson at the United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters.^[3]

Earth sciences

• Derek Ager publishes The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record.

History of science

• May 5 – July 28 – BBC Television series The Ascent of Man, written and presented by Jacob Bronowski, first airs; there is also an accompanying bestselling book.

Mathematics

• Fischer Black and Myron Scholes first articulate the Black–Scholes mathematical model of a financial market containing certain derivative investment instruments.^[4]

Physiology and medicine

• The term "dendritic cell" is coined by Ralph M. Steinman working with Zanvil A. Cohn.^[5]

Psychology

• David Rosenhan publishes the results of his experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis.^[6]
• The American Psychiatric Association officially declares that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

Technology

• April 3 – The first handheld mobile phone call is made by Martin Cooper of Motorola in New York City.^[7]
• Ichiro Kato, Waseda University, develops the world's first full-scale humanoid robot, Wabot-1.^[8]

Institutions

• March 6 – The Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded as the Montenegrin Society for Science and Arts (Crnogorsko društvo za nauku i umjetnost), elects its first members.^[9]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Leo Esaki, Ivar Giaever, Brian David Josephson
  • Chemistry – Ernst Otto Fischer, Geoffrey Wilkinson
  • Medicine – Karl Von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen
• Turing Award – Charles W. Bachman

Births

• October 5 – Cédric Villani, French mathematician
• November 19 – Nim Chimpsky (d. 2000), chimpanzee
• December 5 – Luboš Motl, Czech theoretical physicist

Deaths

• February 11 – J. Hans D. Jensen (b. 1907), German nuclear physicist
• March 12 – David Lack (b. 1910), English ornithologist
• March 14 – Howard H. Aiken (b. 1900), American computing pioneer
• July 3 – Laurens Hammond (b. 1895), American inventor
• December 10 – Wolf V. Vishniac (b. 1922), American microbiologist
• December 17 – Charles Greeley Abbot (b. 1872), American astrophysicist

References

1. Woodward, R. B. (1973). "The Total Synthesis of Vitamin B₁₂". Pure and Applied Chemistry 33 (1): 145–178. doi:10.1351/pac197333010145. PMID 4684454. Retrieved 2012-01-13.
2. Nicolaou, K. C.; Sorensen, E. J. (1996). Classics in Total Synthesis: Targets, Strategies, Methods. Wiley. ISBN 978-3-527-29231-8.
3. Disclosed 1997. http://web.archive.org/web/20100519084635/http://www.gchq.gov.uk/history/pke.html
4. Black, Fischer; Scholes, Myron (May–June 1973). "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities". Journal of Political Economy (University of Chicago Press) 81 (3): 637–654. doi:10.1086/260062. JSTOR 1831029.
5. Steinman, R. M.; Cohn, Z. A. (1973). "Identification of a Novel Cell Type in Peripheral Lymphoid Organs of Mice: I. Morphology, Quantitation, Tissue Distribution". Journal of Experimental Medicine 137 (5): 1142–62. doi:10.1084/jem.137.5.1142. PMC 2139237. PMID 4573839.
6. Rosenhan, D. L. (January 1973). "On being sane in insane places". Science (New York) 179 (4070): 250–8. Bibcode:1973Sci...179..250R. doi:10.1126/science.179.4070.250. PMID 4683124. Archived from the original on 2004-11-17.
7. "First Mobile Phone Call Was Placed Exactly 40 Years Ago". Mashable. 2013. Retrieved 2013-04-03.
8. "History of Industrial Robots" (PDF). International Federation of Robotics. 2012. Retrieved 2013-04-03.
9. "Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (MASA)". IAP. 2013. Retrieved 2015-01-09.