1966 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1966 in science
and technology
involved some significant events, listed below.
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy and space exploration
- February 3 - The unmanned Soviet Luna 9Luna 9Luna 9 was an unmanned space mission of the Soviet Union's Luna program. On February 3, 1966 the Luna 9 spacecraft was the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on any planetary body other than Earth and to transmit photographic data to Earth.The automatic lunar station that achieved the...
spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the MoonMoonThe Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
. - March 1 - Venera 3Venera 3Venera 3 was a Venera program space probe that was built and launched by the Soviet Union to explore the surface of Venus. It was launched on November 16, 1965 at 04:19 UTC from Baikonur, Kazakhstan....
Soviet space probeSpace probeA robotic spacecraft is a spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to...
crashes on VenusVenusVenus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
becoming the first spacecraftSpacecraftA spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
to land on another planetPlanetA planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
's surface. - March 31 - The Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
launches Luna 10Luna 10Luna 10 was a Luna program, robotic spacecraft mission, also called Lunik 10.The Luna 10 spacecraft was launched towards the Moon from an Earth orbiting platform on March 31, 1966. It was the first artificial satellite of the Moon...
which later becomes the first spacecraft to enter orbit around the Moon. - Notable display of the LeonidsLeonidsThe Leonids is a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. They tend to peak in November.Earth moves through the meteoroid...
over the AmericasAmericasThe Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
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Biology
- The first live specimen of a Mountain Pygmy PossumMountain Pygmy PossumThe Mountain Pygmy Possum is a small, mouse-sized nocturnal marsupial of Australia found in dense alpine rock screes and boulder fields, mainly southern Victoria and around Mount Kosciuszko in Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales at elevations from 1300 to 2230 m...
(Burramys parvus), AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
's only truly hibernating marsupialMarsupialMarsupials are an infraclass of mammals, characterized by giving birth to relatively undeveloped young. Close to 70% of the 334 extant species occur in Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands, with the remaining 100 found in the Americas, primarily in South America, but with thirteen in Central...
, previously known only from the fossil record, is discovered.
Computer science
- Martin Richards designs the BCPLBCPLBCPL is a procedural, imperative, and structured computer programming language designed by Martin Richards of the University of Cambridge in 1966.- Design :...
programming languageProgramming languageA programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
. - Roger MacGowan and Frederick Ordway first suggest the concept of machine superorganisms in Intelligence in the Universe.
Mathematics
- Chen JingrunChen JingrunChen Jingrun was a Chinese mathematician who made significant contributions to number theory.- Personal life :Chen was the third son in a large family from Fuzhou, Fujian, China. His father was a postal worker. Chen Jingrun graduated from the Mathematics Department of Xiamen University in 1953...
publishes Chen's theoremChen's theoremright|thumb|Chen JingrunChen's theorem states that every sufficiently large even number can be written as the sum of either two primes, or a prime and a semiprime . The theorem was first stated by Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun in 1966, with further details of the proof in 1973. His original...
: every sufficiently large even number can be written as the sumSUMSUM can refer to:* The State University of Management* Soccer United Marketing* Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures* StartUp-Manager* Software User’s Manual,as from DOD-STD-2 167A, and MIL-STD-498...
of a primePrime numberA prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. A natural number greater than 1 that is not a prime number is called a composite number. For example 5 is prime, as only 1 and 5 divide it, whereas 6 is composite, since it has the divisors 2...
and a semiprimeSemiprimeIn mathematics, a semiprime is a natural number that is the product of two prime numbers. The first few semiprimes are 4, 6, 9, 10, 14, 15, 21, 22, 25, 26, ... ....
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Psychology
- On AggressionOn AggressionOn Aggression is a book by ethologist Konrad Lorenz written in 1963. As he writes in the prologue, "the subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." According to Lorenz, animals, particularly...
and Behind the MirrorBehind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human KnowledgeBehind the mirror, a search for a natural history of human knowledge was published by Konrad Lorenz in 1973 as Die Rückseite des Spiegels, Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens. The direct translation of the German title is "The of the mirror"...
are published by Konrad LorenzKonrad LorenzKonrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch...
.
Awards
- Fields Prize in MathematicsFields MedalThe Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union , a meeting that takes place every four...
: Michael AtiyahMichael AtiyahSir Michael Francis Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE is a British mathematician working in geometry.Atiyah grew up in Sudan and Egypt but spent most of his academic life in the United Kingdom at Oxford and Cambridge, and in the United States at the Institute for Advanced Study...
, Paul Joseph CohenPaul Cohen (mathematician)Paul Joseph Cohen was an American mathematician best known for his proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, the most widely accepted axiomatization of set theory.-Early years:Cohen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, into a...
, Alexander GrothendieckAlexander GrothendieckAlexander Grothendieck is a mathematician and the central figure behind the creation of the modern theory of algebraic geometry. His research program vastly extended the scope of the field, incorporating major elements of commutative algebra, homological algebra, sheaf theory, and category theory...
and Stephen SmaleStephen SmaleSteven Smale a.k.a. Steve Smale, Stephen Smale is an American mathematician from Flint, Michigan. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966, and spent more than three decades on the mathematics faculty of the University of California, Berkeley .-Education and career:He entered the University of... - Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s- PhysicsNobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
- Alfred KastlerAlfred KastlerAlfred Kastler was a French physicist, and Nobel Prize laureate.Kastler was born in Guebwiller and later attended the Lycée Bartholdi in Colmar, Alsace, and École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1921... - ChemistryNobel Prize in ChemistryThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
- Robert S. MullikenRobert S. MullikenRobert Sanderson Mulliken was an American physicist and chemist, primarily responsible for the early development of molecular orbital theory, i.e. the elaboration of the molecular orbital method of computing the structure of molecules. Dr. Mulliken received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1966... - MedicineNobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
- Peyton Rous, Charles Brenton HugginsCharles Brenton HugginsCharles Brenton Huggins was a Canadian-born American physician and physiologist and cancer researcher at the University of Chicago specializing in prostate cancer. He and Peyton Rous were awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering that hormones could be used to control...
- Physics
- Turing AwardTuring AwardThe Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
- A.J. Perlis
Births
- June 13 - Grigori PerelmanGrigori PerelmanGrigori Yakovlevich Perelman is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology.In 1992, Perelman proved the soul conjecture. In 2002, he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture...
, mathematicianMathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
. - July 8 - Ralf AltmeyerRalf AltmeyerProf. Dr. Ralf M. Altmeyer is a German virologist who leads the ', a joint institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institut Pasteur and Shanghai Municipal Government, founded in 2004....
, German virologist.
Deaths
- January 15 - Sergei Korolev (b. 19071907 in scienceThe year 1907 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Chemistry:* Emil Fischer artificially synthesizes peptide amino acid chains and thereby shows that amino acids in proteins are connected by amino group-acid group bonds....
), spaceSpaceSpace is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
scientistScientistA scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
. - March 1 - Fritz HoutermansFritz HoutermansFriedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist born in Zoppot near Danzig, West Prussia...
(b. 19031903 in scienceThe year 1903 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Aeronautics:* December 17 - First documented, successful, controlled, powered flight of an aircraft with a petrol engine by Orville Wright in the Wright Flyer at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.* Konstantin...
), physicistPhysicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
. - July 7 - George de HevesyGeorge de HevesyGeorge Charles de Hevesy, Georg Karl von Hevesy, was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study chemical processes such as in the metabolism of animals.- Early years :Hevesy György was born in Budapest,...
(b. 18851885 in scienceThe year 1885 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* August 20 - Ernst Hartwig discovers S Andromedae, a supernova in the Andromeda galaxy, the first supernova discovered beyond the Milky Way.-Biology:...
), chemistChemistA chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
Nobel laureate.