2000 in science
| |||
|---|---|---|---|
The year 2000 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Astronomy and space exploration
Conjunction of planets, moon and sun on May 4, 2000
- May 4 – A rare astronomical conjunction occurs on the New Moon including all seven of the traditional celestial bodies known from ancient times until the discovery of Uranus in 1781; this conjunction consists of the Sun and Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
- August 10 – Publication of the M-sigma relation in The Astrophysical Journal.
Biology
- June 26 – 'Rough draft' of the human genome is announced jointly by President of the United States Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.[1]
- December 14 – The full genome sequence of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana is published in Nature.
- 10-year Census of Marine Life launched.[2]
Computer science
- March 4 – Sony Computer Entertainment releases the PlayStation 2 sixth generation home video game console in Japan.
- March 14 – Stephen King's horror story Riding the Bullet is published in e-book format only, the world's first mass-market electronic book.
Medicine
- January 31 – English doctor Harold Shipman is found guilty of killing fifteen of his elderly patients by lethal injections of diamorphine, the only British physician ever convicted of murdering his patients; he is actually considered to have killed at least 215.[3]
Paleontology
- First fossil of Orrorin, an early species of Homininae, discovered in the Tugen Hills of Kenya.
Philosophy
Main article: 2000 in philosophy
Awards
Deaths
- January 19 – G. Ledyard Stebbins (b. 1906), American botanist and geneticist.
- March 7 – W. D. Hamilton (b. 1936), English evolutionary biologist, widely recognised as one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century.
- March 10 – Nim Chimpsky (b. 1973), chimpanzee
- May 19 – Yevgeny Khrunov (b. 1933), cosmonaut
- June 14 – Elsie Widdowson (b. 1908), nutritionist
- July 8 – W. David Kingery (b. 1926), materials scientist specializing in ceramic materials
- September 20 – Gherman Titov (b. 1935), cosmonaut
- October 4 – Michael Smith (b. 1932), chemist, 1993 Nobel Prize winner
- November 20 – Nikolay Dollezhal (b. 1899), a key figure in Soviet atomic bomb project and chief designer of nuclear reactors
References
- ↑ "White House Press Release". Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-04.
- ↑ "Census of Marine Life". Retrieved 2011-10-10.
- ↑ "Harold Shipman: Timeline". BBC News. 2002-07-18. Retrieved 2011-08-04.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, December 27, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.