1979 in science

List of years in science (table)
... 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 ... 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 ... 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 ...
Art Archaeology Architecture Literature Music Philosophy Science +...

The year 1979 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 7 – Pluto enters a 20-year period inside the orbit of Neptune for the first time in 230 years.
• March 7 – The largest magnetar (soft gamma repeater) event is recorded.
• July 11 – America's first space station, Skylab, is deliberately allowed to burn up on atmospheric entry over the Indian Ocean.
• September 1 – The American Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 21,000 km.
• December 24 – The maiden launch of Ariane 1, the first rocket in the Ariane launcher family.
• Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific given for the first time.

Biology

• Baden Powell publishes New Zealand Mollusca.

Computer science

• VisiCalc becomes the first spreadsheet program.
• The US Federal Government releases the initial, draft version of Ada (programming language), a strongly typed, comb-structured language with exception handlers, for embedded systems.

Conservation

• April 5 – First stage of Kakadu National Park declared in Australia.

History of science

• Robert Gwyn Macfarlane publishes Howard Florey: The Making of a Great Scientist.

Mathematics

• 'Monstrous moonshine': John Conway and Simon P. Norton prove there is a connection between the Monster group M and the j-function in number theory.^[1]
• The first modern Sudoku, known as Number Place, appears in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games (United States), devised by Howard Garns.^[2]

Medicine

• August – The eating disorder Bulimia nervosa is first described and named by British psychiatrist Gerald Russell.^[3][4]
• December 9 – The World Health Organization certifies the global eradication of smallpox.^[5]
• The last naturally occurring cases of Polio are reported in the United States.
• Tumor protein p53 is identified by Lionel Crawford, David Lane, Arnold J. Levine and Lloyd J. Old.

Technology

• March 1 – Philips publicly demonstrate a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
• June 12 – Human-powered aircraft Gossamer Albatross, built by an American team led by Paul MacCready and piloted by Bryan Allen, makes a successful crossing of the English Channel to win the second Kremer prize.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg
  • Chemistry – Herbert C. Brown, Georg Wittig
  • Medicine – Allan M. Cormack, Godfrey N. Hounsfield
• Turing Award – Kenneth E. Iverson

Births

• June 29 – Artur Avila, Brazilian-born mathematician.

Deaths

• January – Oscar H. Banker (b. 1895), Armenian American inventor.
• March 17 – Henry Aaron Hill (b. 1915), American fluorocarbon chemist, first African American president of the American Chemical Society.
• April 5 – Eugène Gabritschevsky (b. 1893), Russian biologist and artist.
• May 6 – Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth (b. 1892), German astronomer.
• September 26 – Sir Barnes Wallis (b. 1887), English aeronautical engineer.

References

1. "Monstrous Moonshine". Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society 11: 308–339. 1979.
2. Pegg, Ed, Jr. (2005-09-15). "Ed Pegg Jr.'s Math Games: Sudoku Variations". MAA Online. The Mathematical Association of America. Retrieved 2006-10-03.
3. Russell, Gerald (August 1979). "Bulimia nervosa: an ominous variant of anorexia nervosa" (PDF). Psychological Medicine 9 (3): 429–48. doi:10.1017/S0033291700031974. PMID 482466. Retrieved 2012-04-10.
4. Palmer, Robert (December 2004). "Bulimia nervosa: 25 years on". British Journal of Psychiatry 185 (6): 447–8. doi:10.1192/bjp.185.6.447. PMID 15572732. Retrieved 2012-04-10.
5. "Smallpox". WHO Factsheet. Retrieved 2007-09-22.