1986 in science

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The year 1986 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 24 – NASA Voyager 2 space probe makes first encounter with Uranus.
• January 28 – NASA Space Shuttle Challenger explodes on launch, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Their bodies are located by United States Navy divers on March 9.
• February 19 – The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station.
• March 8 – Japanese spacecraft Suisei flies by Halley's Comet, studying its UV hydrogen corona and solar wind.

Biology

• May – First reported methods for constructing a monoclonal antibody containing parts from mouse and human antibodies, a required first step toward the development of humanized antibodies used later as medical therapeutics (such as Infliximab).^[1][2]

Computer science

• January 16 – The Internet Engineering Task Force, a standards organization that develops and promotes Internet standards, holds its first meeting, consisting of 21 United States government-funded researchers.
• January 19 – The first MS-DOS-based personal computer virus, Brain, starts to spread.^[3]
• April 3 – IBM unveils the PC Convertible, the first laptop computer.
• June 23 – Eric Thomas develops LISTSERV, the first email list management software.^[4]
• Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is visualized by Mark Crispin.
• 3D printing is developed by Charles Hull.

Mathematics

• Summer – Kenneth Alan Ribet demonstrates proof of the ε-conjecture, subsequently known as Ribet's theorem^[5] confirming Gerhard Frey's suggestion that the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture implies Fermat's Last Theorem.^[6]
• Lee Sallows introduces the alphamagic square.^[7]

Medicine

• Food and Drug Administration approval of the first monoclonal antibody drug, Muronomab-CD3 (also known as Orthoclone OKT3), for treatment of transplant rejection.

Awards

• Crafoord Prize in Geosciences: Gerald Wasserburg and Claude Jean Allègre
• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Simon Donaldson, Gerd Faltings and Michael Freedman
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer
  • Chemistry – Dudley R. Herschbach, Yuan T. Lee, John C. Polanyi
  • Medicine – Stanley Cohen, Rita Levi-Montalcini
• Turing Award – John Hopcroft, Robert Tarjan
• Wollaston Medal for Geology – Claude Jean Allègre

Deaths

Crew of NASA Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-L

• January 7 – Rex Wailes (b. 1901), English engineer and historian of technology.
• January 28
  • Crew of United States Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-L:
    • Greg Jarvis (b. 1944)
    • Christa McAuliffe (b. 1948)
    • Ronald McNair (b. 1950)
    • Ellison Onizuka (b. 1946)
    • Judith Resnik (b. 1949)
    • Dick Scobee (b. 1939)
    • Michael J. Smith (b. 1945)
  • Dorothée Pullinger (b. 1894), French-born British production engineer.
• April 22 – Dame Honor Fell (b. 1900), English biologist.
• July 21 – Zhang Yuzhe (b. 1902), Chinese astronomer.
• October 22 – Albert Szent-Györgyi (b. 1893), Hungarian physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• October 23 – Edward Adelbert Doisy (b. 1893), American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• November 25 – Sir Ivan Magill (b. 1888), British anesthesiologist.

References

1. Jones, Peter T.; Dear, Paul H.; Foote, Jefferson; Neuberger, Michael S.; Winter, Greg (1986). "Replacing the complementarity-determining regions in a human antibody with those from a mouse" (PDF). Nature 321 (6069): 522–525. doi:10.1038/321522a0. PMID 3713831. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
2. Waldman, Thomas A. (2003). "Immunotherapy: past, present and future". Nature Medicine 9 (3): 269–277. doi:10.1038/nm0303-269. PMID 12612576. Archived from the original on 28 June 2011. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
3. Leyden, John (January 19, 2006). "PC virus celebrates 20th birthday". The Register. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
4. "1986". Retrieved 2013-01-25.
5. Ribet, Ken (1990). "On modular representations of Gal(Q/Q) arising from modular forms" (PDF). Inventiones Mathematicae 100 (2): 431–471.
6. Frey, Gerhard (1986). Links between stable elliptic curves and certain Diophantine equations. Annales Universitatis Saraviensis. Series Mathematicae 1. pp. iv+40. ISSN 0933-8268. MR 853387.
7. "alphamagic square". Encyclopedia of Science. Retrieved 2012-05-12.