1992 in science

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The year 1992 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.

Anthropology

• June – British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposes Dunbar's number (approximately 150) as a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom an interpersonal relationship can be maintained in human communities.^[1]

Astronomy

• January 5 – Asteroid 5751 Zao is discovered by Masahiro Koishikawa.
• April 21 – First confirmed detection of extrasolar planets with announcement of the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail.^[2]
• August 30 – Discovery of (15760) 1992 QB1, the first trans-Neptunian object to be found after Pluto and Charon.
• October 31 – Pope John Paul II issues an apology and lifts the edict of the Inquisition against Galileo Galilei.

Biology

• Saola first identified in the Vũ Quang rainforest reserve of northern Vietnam. This member of the bovini tribe is the first large mammal new to science anywhere in the world for more than fifty years and it will take another two decades before live specimens are recorded.^[3]
• British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins delivers the 1992 Voltaire Lecture, "Viruses of the Mind", describing religion and the belief in god as a parasitic memetic virus that infects human minds^[4]

Computer science

• March 9 – ViolaWWW, the first popular Web browser, created by Pei-Yuan Wei in the United States, is publicly released for Unix.
• September – The SOCKS Internet protocol is made public.^[5]

Mathematics

• International Society for Bayesian Analysis founded by Arnold Zellner.^[6]

Medicine

• October – First Cochrane Centre opens (in the UK) and the first Cochrane Review Groups (Pregnancy & Childbirth and Subfertility) are registered.
• October 29 – The Food and Drug Administration approves Depo Provera for use as a contraceptive in the United States.

Physics

• Hungary becomes a member of CERN.

Technology

• The IBM Simon, a touchscreen mobile phone and personal digital assistant considered the first smartphone, is introduced.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics: Georges Charpak
  • Chemistry: Rudolph A. Marcus
  • Medicine: Edmond H. Fischer, Edwin G. Krebs
• Turing Award: Butler Lampson
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Martin Harold Phillips Bott

Deaths

• January 1 – Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (b. 1906), American pioneer computer scientist.
• April 6 – Isaac Asimov (b. 1920), American science author.
• April 10 – Peter D. Mitchell (b. 1920), English Nobel laureate in chemistry.
• July 24 – Gavriil Ilizarov (b. 1921), Soviet orthopedic surgeon.
• August 26 – Daniel Gorenstein (b. 1923), American mathematician.
• November 5 – Jan Oort (b. 1900), Dutch astronomer.

References

1. Dunbar, R. I. M. (June 1992). "Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates". Journal of Human Evolution 22 (6): 469–493. doi:10.1016/0047-2484(92)90081-J.
2. Wolszczan, A.; Frail, D. A. (1992). "A planetary system around the millisecond pulsar PSR1257 + 12". Nature 355 (6356): 145. Bibcode:1992Natur.355..145W. doi:10.1038/355145a0.
3. Dung, Vu Van; Giao, Pham Mong; Chinh, Nguyen Ngoc; Tuoc, Do; Arctander, Peter; MacKinnon, John (1993). "A new species of living bovid from Vietnam". Nature 363 (6428): 443. Bibcode:1993Natur.363..443V. doi:10.1038/363443a0.
4. Dawkins, Richard (1992). Viruses of the Mind. 1992 Voltaire Lecture. London: British Humanist Association. Republished in 1993 in the book, Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind.
5. Koblas, David (September 1992), "SOCKS", Proceedings of the Third USENIX UNIX Security Symposium (Baltimore, MD: USENIX Association)
6. Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.