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The year
1984 in scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
and
technologyTechnology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment...
involved some significant events.
Astronomy and space exploration
- February 7 - Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
s Bruce McCandless IIBruce McCandless II is a former naval aviator with the United States Navy and former NASA astronaut. During the first of his two Space Shuttle missions he made the first untethered, free flight using the Manned Maneuvering Unit.-Education:McCandless is the son of Bruce McCandless, a decorated...
and Robert L. StewartRobert Lee Stewart is a retired Brigadier General of the United States Army and former NASA astronaut.-Personal:Stewart was born August 13, 1942, in Washington, D.C.. He graduated from Hattiesburg High School, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1960...
make the first untethered space walk.
- The NRAO converts the 36-foot Radio Telescope on Kitt Peak
Kitt Peak is a mountain in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is the location of the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The radio telescope at the Observatory is one of ten dishes comprising the Very Long Baseline Array ....
(originally built in 1967The year 1967 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy and space exploration:*January 27 - Apollo 1 destroyed in a fire on the launch pad.*January 27 - USA, Soviet Union and UK sign the Outer Space Treaty....
) to a 12 Meter TelescopeThe ARO 12m Radio Telescope is a 12-meter dish located on Kitt Peak, approximately 60 mi from Tucson, Arizona at an elevation of 6215.8 ft .-History:...
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Computer science
- January 5 - Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often abbreviated "rms","'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
starts developing GNUGNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for “GNU's not Unix!” This name was chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code...
.
- January 22 - The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to use a computer mouse and GUI
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
interface, is introduced by Apple Computer corporationApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
Technology
- July 21 - In Jackson, Michigan
Jackson is a city located along Interstate 94 in the south central area of the U.S. state of Michigan, about west of Ann Arbor. It is the county seat of Jackson County. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 36,316...
, a factory robotA robot is a virtual or mechanical artificial agent. In practice, it is usually an electro-mechanical machine which is guided by computer or electronic programming, and is thus able to do tasks on its own...
crushes a worker against a safety bar in apparently the first robot-related death in the United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Awards
- Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901...
s
- Physics
The 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...
- Carlo RubbiaCarlo Rubbia is an Italian particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 for work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN.-Biography:...
, Simon van der MeerSimon van der Meer is a Dutch accelerator physicist who invented the concept of stochastic cooling in colliders, making possible the discovery of the W particle and the Z particle at the CERN 500 Gev proton-antiproton collider by the UA-1 experimental collaboration led by Carlo Rubbia...
- Chemistry
The 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 Bruce MerrifieldRobert Bruce Merrifield was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for the invention of solid phase peptide synthesis.-Early life:...
- Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded once a year by the Swedish Karolinska Institute. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Physiology or Medicine...
- Niels K. Jerne, Georges J. F. KöhlerGeorges Jean Franz Köhler was a German biologist.Together with César Milstein and Niels K. Jerne, Köhler won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984, "for work on the immune system and the production of monoclonal antibodies"...
, César MilsteinCésar Milstein was an Argentine biochemist in the field of antibody research. Milstein shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 with Niels K. Jerne and Georges Köhler.-Biography:...
- Turing Award
The A. M. Turing Award is given annually 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 computer field"...
- Niklaus WirthNiklaus Emil Wirth is a Swiss computer scientist, best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he won the Turing Award for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.-Biography:Wirth...
Deaths
- May 13 - Stanisław Marcin Ulam (b. 1909
blahThe year 1909 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Physics:* Albert Einstein together with Marcel Grossmann starts to develop a theory which would bind metric tensor gik, which defines a space geometry, with a source of gravity,...
), mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with particular problems related to logic, space, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts...
.
- October 20 - Paul Dirac
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM, FRS was a British theoretical physicist. Dirac made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics...
(b. 1902The year 1902 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Aeronautics:*May 15 - Lyman Gilmore claims to have flown his steam-powered fixed-wing aircraft, although his proof was supposedly destroyed in a 1935 fire....
), physicistA 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...
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