1973 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1973 in science
and technology
involved one significant event, 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 one significant event, listed below.
Astronomy and space exploration
- March 7 - Comet KohoutekComet KohoutekComet Kohoutek, formally designated C/1973 E1, 1973 XII, and 1973f, was first sighted on 7 March 1973 by Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek. It attained perihelion on 28 December that same year....
is discovered - April 6 - Launch of Pioneer 11Pioneer 11Pioneer 11 is a 259-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on April 6, 1973 to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter and Saturn, solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the solar system and heliosphere...
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.... - May 14 - SkylabSkylabSkylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA, the space agency of the United States. Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a mass of...
, the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' first space stationSpace stationA space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a crew which is designed to remain in space for an extended period of time, and to which other spacecraft can dock. A space station is distinguished from other spacecraft used for human spaceflight by its lack of major propulsion or landing...
, is launched. - Solar eclipse of June 30, 1973Solar eclipse of June 30, 1973A total solar eclipse occurred on June 30, 1973. - Observations :This eclipse was observed by a group of scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory using two airplanes to extend the apparent time of totality by flying along the eclipse path in the same direction as the Moon's shadow as it...
- Very long total solar eclipseSolar eclipseAs seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth. This can happen only during a new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth. At least...
visible in NE South America, the Atlantic, and central Africa. During the entire Second Millennium, only seven total solar eclipses exceeded seven minutes of totality. This was the last. Observers aboard a ConcordeConcordeAérospatiale-BAC Concorde was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport . It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation...
jet were able to stretch totality to about 74 minutes by flying along the path of the moon's umbraUmbraThe umbra, penumbra and antumbra are the names given to three distinct parts of a shadow, created by any light source. For a point source only the umbra is cast.These names are most often used to refer to the shadows cast by celestial bodies....
. - July 25 - SovietSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
Mars 5 space probe launched. - November 3 - Mariner programMariner programThe Mariner program was a program conducted by the American space agency NASA that launched a series of robotic interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury from 1963 to 1973...
: NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
launches the Mariner 10Mariner 10Mariner 10 was an American robotic space probe launched by NASA on November 3, 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus. It was launched approximately two years after Mariner 9 and was the last spacecraft in the Mariner program...
toward MercuryMercury (planet)Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...
(on March 29, 1974 it became the first 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...
to reach that planet). - December 3 - Pioneer programPioneer programThe Pioneer program is a series of United States unmanned space missions that was designed for planetary exploration. There were a number of such missions in the program, but the most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored the outer planets and left the solar system...
: Pioneer 10Pioneer 10Pioneer 10 is a 258-kilogram robotic space probe that completed the first interplanetary mission to Jupiter, and became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. The project was managed by the NASA Ames Research Center and the contract for the construction of the...
sends back the first close-up images of JupiterJupiterJupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
. - December 7 - The "Big Ear" at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory begins a full time SETI radio survey, running continuously until 19951995 in scienceThe year 1995 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.-Archaeology:* January 18 - In southern France near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc a network of caves are discovered that contain paintings and engravings that are 17,000 to 20,000 years old.* Wes Linster discovers the first...
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Cryptography
- Asymmetric key algorithms for public-key cryptographyPublic-key cryptographyPublic-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one to lock or encrypt the plaintext, and one to unlock or decrypt the cyphertext. Neither key will do both functions. One of these keys is published or public and the other is kept private...
developed by James H. EllisJames H. EllisJames Henry Ellis was a British engineer and mathematician. In 1970, while working at the Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham he conceived of the possibility of "non-secret encryption", more commonly termed public-key cryptography.-Early life, education and career:Ellis was born...
, Clifford CocksClifford CocksClifford Christopher Cocks, CB, is a British mathematician and cryptographer at GCHQ.He invented the widely-used encryption algorithm now commonly known as RSA, about three years before it was independently developed by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman at MIT...
and Malcolm WilliamsonMalcolm J. WilliamsonMalcolm John Williamson is a British mathematician and cryptographer. In 1974 he discovered what is now known as Diffie-Hellman key exchange. He was then working at GCHQ and was therefore unable to publicize his research as his work was classified...
at the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Government Communications HeadquartersGovernment Communications HeadquartersThe Government Communications Headquarters is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces...
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Physiology and medicine
- The term "dendritic cellDendritic cellDendritic cells are immune cells forming part of the mammalian immune system. Their main function is to process antigen material and present it on the surface to other cells of the immune system. That is, dendritic cells function as antigen-presenting cells...
" is coined by Ralph M. SteinmanRalph M. SteinmanRalph Marvin Steinman was a Canadian immunologist and cell biologist at Rockefeller University, who in 1973 coined the term dendritic cells while working as a postdoc in the lab of Zanvil A. Cohn, also at Rockefeller University....
working with Zanvil A. CohnZanvil A. CohnZanvil Alexander Cohn a cell biologist and immunologist was a professor at Rockefeller University. There Cohn had been the Henry G. Kunkel Professor for seven years. Cohn was senior physician at the university as well as vice president for medical affairs...
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Psychology
- David RosenhanDavid RosenhanDavid L. Rosenhan is an American psychologist. He is best known for the Rosenhan experiment.Rosenhan received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yeshiva University...
publishes the results of his experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosisRosenhan experimentThe Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places." The study is considered an important and influential criticism of...
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Awards
- 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...
- Leo EsakiLeo EsakiReona Esaki also known as Leo Esaki is a Japanese physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Ivar Giaever and Brian David Josephson for his discovery of the phenomenon of electron tunneling. He is known for his invention of the Esaki diode, which exploited that phenomenon...
, Ivar GiaeverIvar GiaeverIvar Giaever is a physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson "for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids". Giaever's share of the prize was specifically for his "experimental discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in ......
, Brian David JosephsonBrian David JosephsonBrian David Josephson, FRS is a Welsh physicist. He became a Nobel Prize laureate in 1973 for the prediction of the eponymous Josephson effect.... - 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,...
- Ernst Otto FischerErnst Otto FischerErnst Otto Fischer was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize for pioneering work in the area of organometallic chemistry.-Early life:...
, Geoffrey WilkinsonGeoffrey WilkinsonSir Geoffrey Wilkinson FRS was a Nobel laureate English chemist who pioneered inorganic chemistry and homogeneous transition metal catalysis.-Biography:... - 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...
- Karl Von FrischKarl von FrischKarl Ritter von Frisch was an Austrian ethologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz....
, 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...
, Nikolaas TinbergenNikolaas TinbergenNikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.In the 1960s he...
- 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...
- Charles W. Bachman
Births
- November 19 - Nim ChimpskyNim ChimpskyNim Chimpsky was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition at Columbia University, led by Herbert S. Terrace....
(d. 20002000 in scienceThe year 2000 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Astronomy and space exploration:* May 4 – A rare conjunction occurs on the New Moon including all seven of the traditional celestial bodies known from ancient times up until 1781 with the discovery of Uranus...
), chimpanzeeChimpanzeeChimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:... - December 5 - Luboš MotlLuboš MotlLuboš Motl is a Czech theoretical physicist who keeps a blog commenting on physics, global warming and politics. His scientific research concentrated on string theory, of which he has been a passionate defender. He proposed Matrix string theory in 1997.Motl was born in Plzeň, Czech Republic...
, Czech theoretical physicist
Deaths
- February 11 - Hans D Jensen (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....
), GermanGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
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...
. - March 12 - David LackDavid LackDavid Lambert Lack FRS, was a British evolutionary biologist who made contributions to ornithology, ecology and ethology. His book on the finches of the Galapagos Islands was a landmark work.- Early life :...
(b. 19101910 in scienceThe year 1910 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Chemistry:* Albert Einstein and Marian Smoluchowski find the Einstein-Smoluchowski formula for the attenuation coefficient due to density fluctuations in a gas...
), EnglishEnglish peopleThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
ornithologist. - March 14 - Howard AikenHoward AikenHoward Hathaway Aiken was a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer....
(b. 19001900 in scienceThe year 1900 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Aeronautics:* July 2 - The first airship flight is made by the LZ1 designed by Ferdinand von Zeppelin.-Chemistry:...
), computing pioneer.