1990 in science

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The year 1990 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 14 – The Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is sent back from the Voyager 1 probe after completing its primary mission, from around 3.5 billion miles away.
• April 23 – Gamma ray burst GRB 090423 is detected, coming from the most distant known astronomical object of any kind at this time.
• April 24 – The Space Shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.^[1]
• October 13 – Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990: A 44 kilogram, 41.5 km/s meteoroid passes above Czechoslovakia and Poland at 97.9 km. It is the first time calculations of the orbit of such a body based on photographic records from two distant places is made.^[2]

Biology and medicine

• June 25 – Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health decided in the Supreme Court of the United States allowing public officials to intervene in questions of termination of life support in the absence of an advance healthcare directive.
• The Human Genome Project is founded.

Computer science

• February – Adobe Photoshop 1.0 graphics software, devised by Thomas Knoll, is released.^[3]
• November 12 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web.^[4]
• November 13 – The first known web page is written.^[5]
• Approx. November 22 – Satoshi Tajiri begins creating the first Pokémon game.^[6]

History of science

• Thomas W. Laqueur publishes Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud (Harvard University Press).

Mathematics

• Victor Kolyvagin introduces Euler systems.^[7]
• Ruth Lawrence publishes a paper on homological representations of the Hecke algebra, introducing, among other things, certain novel linear representations of the braid group, the Lawrence–Krammer representation.^[8]

Paleontology

• August 12 – "Sue", the best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen ever found, is discovered in South Dakota by Sue Hendrickson.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Vladimir Drinfeld, Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones, Shigefumi Mori and Edward Witten
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Jerome I. Friedman, Henry W. Kendall, Richard Taylor
  • Chemistry – Elias James Corey
  • Medicine – Joseph E. Murray, E. Donnall Thomas
• Turing Award – Fernando J. Corbató

Deaths

• January 4 – Prof. Doc Edgerton, (b. 1903), American electrical engineer.
• January 14 – Rosalind Pitt-Rivers (b. 1907), English biochemist.
• January 26 – Lewis Mumford (b. 1895), American historian and philosopher of science.
• February 19 – Edris Rice-Wray Carson (b. 1904), American-born physician, pioneer in family planning.
• March 20 – Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild (b. 1910), English polymath.
• March 22 – Gerald Bull (b. 1928), Canadian engineer.
• March 24 – An Wang (b. 1920), Chinese American computer designer.
• October 9 – Murray Bowen (b. 1913), American psychiatrist and pioneer of family therapy.
• October 17 – Hans Freudenthal (b. 1905), Dutch mathematician.

References

1. "STS-31". Mission Archives. NASA. 2006-10-14. Retrieved 2013-01-17.
2. Spurný, P.; Ceplecha, Z.; Borovicka, J. "Earth-grazing fireball: Czechoslovakia, Poland, October 13, 1990, 03h27m16sUT". WGN 19 (1): 13. Retrieved 2015-11-27. Aphelion of its orbit changed from 2.80 AU to 1.80 AU.
3. Hormby, John (2007-06-05). "How Adobe's Photoshop Was Born". Story Photography. Archived from the original on 2007-10-11. Retrieved 2007-06-15.
4. Berners-Lee, T.; Cailliau, R. (12 November 1990). "WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project". Retrieved 2011-11-29.
5. "Links and Anchors". Retrieved 2011-11-29.
6. Larimer, Tim (1999-11-22). "The Ultimate Game Freak". Time 154 (20) (Asia). Retrieved 2015-02-02.
7. Kolyvagin, V. A. (1990), "Euler systems", The Grothendieck Festschrift, Vol. II, Progress in Mathematics 87, Boston: Birkhäuser, pp. 435–483, doi:10.1007/978-0-8176-4575-5_11, ISBN 978-0-8176-3428-5, MR 1106906
8. Lawrence, R. J. (1990). "Homological representations of the Hecke algebra" (PDF). Communications in Mathematical Physics 135: 141–191. Bibcode:1990CMaPh.135..141L. doi:10.1007/BF02097660. Retrieved 2011-11-29.