Login
Login

1954 in science

{{Short description|none}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2012}}

{{Year nav topic5|1954|science}}

{{Science year nav|1954}}

The year 1954 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

  • November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite crashes through a roof and hits Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio, giving her a bad bruise; the first known modern case of a human being hit by a space rock.

Biology

  • January 10 – Last confirmed specimen of a Caspian tiger is killed, in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet Dag Mountains of Turkmenistan.{{cite book|author=Dement'yev and Rustamov|title=The Red Data Book of Turkmenistan|publisher=Turkmenistan Publishing House|year=1985|location=Ashgabat}}
  • Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.{{cite journal|author1=Arnon, Daniel I. |author2=Allen, Mary B. |author3=Whatley, F. R. |title=Photosynthesis by Isolated Chloroplasts|journal=Nature|volume=174|year=1954|pages=394–6|issue=4426|doi=10.1038/174394a0|pmid=13194001 |bibcode = 1954Natur.174..394A |s2cid=2462316 }}{{cite news|last=Laurence|first=William L.|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1954/12/30/archives/sun-is-harnessed-to-create-food-science-team-on-the-coast.html|title=Sun is Harnessed to Create Food: Science Team on the Coast Duplicates Photosynthesis Outside Plants' Cells|work=The New York Times|date=December 30, 1954|access-date=July 18, 2010}}
  • Heinz Sielmann makes the pioneering nature documentary about woodpeckers, Zimmerleute des Waldes ("Carpenters of the forest").
  • Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck propose the species name bonobo for what was previously known as the pygmy chimpanzee.{{cite book|editor=de Waal, Frans B. M.|title=Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us About Human Social Evolution|location=Cambridge, Mass|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2002|isbn=0-674-00460-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/treeoforiginwhat00waal/page/51 51]|editor-link=Frans de Waal|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/treeoforiginwhat00waal/page/51}}

Chemistry

  • Publication of the first analysis of the three-dimensional molecular structure of vitamin B12 by a group including Dorothy Hodgkin, and utilising computer analysis provided by Kenneth Nyitray Trueblood.{{cite journal|author1=Brink, Clara |author2=Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowfoot |author3=Lindsey, June|authorlink3=June Lindsey |author4=Pickworth, Jenny |author5=Robertson, John H. |author6=White, John G. |date=December 25, 1954|title=X-ray Crystallographic Evidence on the Structure of Vitamin B12|journal=Nature|volume=174|pages=1169–117|doi=10.1038/1741169a0|issue=4443|bibcode = 1954Natur.174.1169B|pmid=13223773|s2cid=4207158 }}{{cite journal|first=Jenny P.|last=Glusker|title=Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994)|journal=Protein Science|year=1994|volume=3|issue=12|pages=2465–2469|doi=10.1002/pro.5560031233|pmid=7757003|pmc=2142778}}
  • Strychnine total synthesis is first achieved in the laboratory by Robert Burns Woodward's team at Harvard.Nicolaou, K. C.; Sorensen, E. J. (1996). Classics in Total Synthesis: Targets, Strategies, Methods. Wiley. {{ISBN|978-3-527-29231-8}}.{{cite journal|author=Nicolaou, K. C.; Vourloumis, Dionisios; Winssinger, Nicolas; Baran, Phil S.|title=The Art and Science of Total Synthesis at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century|journal=Angewandte Chemie International Edition|year=2000|volume=39|issue=1|pages=44-122}}{{cite journal|last1=Bonjoch|first1=Josep|last2=Sole|first2=Daniel|year=2000|title=Synthesis of Strychnine|journal=Chemical Reviews|volume=100|issue=9|pages=3455–3482|doi=10.1021/cr9902547|pmid=11777429}}{{cite journal|last=Proudfoot|first=John R.|year=2013|title=Reaction Schemes Visualized in Network Form: The Syntheses of Strychnine as an Example|journal=Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling|volume=53|issue=5|pages=1035–1042|doi=10.1021/ci300556b|pmid=23597302}}
  • The Wittig reaction is discovered by German chemist Georg Wittig.

Computer science

  • January – The TRADIC Phase One computer is completed at Bell Labs in the United States, a candidate to be regarded as the first transistor computer.{{cite journal|last=Irvine|first= M. M.|title=Early Digital Computers at Bell Telephone Laboratories|journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing|volume=23|issue=3|pages=22–42|year=2001|url=http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/85.948904|access-date=2009-06-07|doi=10.1109/85.948904}}
  • January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.

Geology

  • December 31 – The first specimens of the mineral benstonite are collected by Orlando J. Benston in the Magnet Cove igneous complex of Arkansas.{{cite web|title=Benstonite|url=http://www.mindat.org/min-626.html|publisher=Mindat|access-date=2012-12-31}}

History of science

Mathematics

Medicine

  • February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  • August 10 – British epidemiologist Richard Doll submits a study on the risk to workers in asbestos manufacture of mortality from lung cancer.{{cite journal|first=Richard|last=Doll|title=Mortality from lung cancer in asbestos workers|journal=British Journal of Industrial Medicine|volume=12|year=1955|issue=6|pages=81–6|doi=10.1136/oem.50.6.485|pmid=8329311|pmc=1035472}}
  • The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris.
  • December 23 – Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston carries out the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins.{{cite web|title=Donor Of First Successful Organ Transplant Dies 56 Years Later|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/donor-in-1st-successful-t_n_802379.html|work=The Huffington Post|access-date=March 15, 2011|date=December 29, 2010}}
  • The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine (U.S.) and Largactil (U.K.)
  • The sucrose gap is introduced by Robert Stämpfli for the reliable measurement of action potential in nerve fibers.{{cite journal|last=Stämpfli|first=R.|title=A new method for measuring membrane potentials with external electrodes|journal=Experientia|volume=10|pages=508–509|year=1954|doi=10.1007/BF02166189|pmid=14353097|issue=12|s2cid=41384989 }}{{cite book|title=Swiss Contributions to the Neurosciences in Four Hundred Years: From the Renaissance to the Present|first=K.|last=Akert|isbn=978-3728123626|publisher=Verlag der Fachvereine Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH Zurich|date=August 1996}}

Metrology

Physics

  • January 2 – Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany at Imperial College London report achieving low-loss light transmission through a 75 cm long optical fiber bundle.{{cite journal|first1=H. H.|last1=Hopkins|first2=N. S.|last2=Kapany|journal=Nature|doi=10.1038/173039b0|volume=173|page=39|year=1954|title=A flexible fibrescope, using static scanning|issue=4392|bibcode=1954Natur.173...39H|s2cid=4275331}}
  • March 1 – Castle Bravo: United States carries out a thermonuclear weapon test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
  • September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.{{cite web|url=http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/History54-en.html|title=1954: foundations for European science|publisher=CERN|year=2008|access-date=February 28, 2011}}
  • First tokamak built, in the Soviet Union.{{cite web|first=V.|last=Reshetov|url=http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/vs/article/429/|title=An ocean of energy|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131113224010/http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/vs/article/429/|date=2013-11-13|archive-date=2013-11-13|language=Russian}}

Psychology

  • Summer – Robbers Cave Experiment carried out by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif.{{cite book|author=Sherif, M.|author2=Harvey, O. J.|author3=White, B. J.|author4=Hood, W.|author5=Sherif, C. W.|title=Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment|url=https://archive.org/details/intergroupconfli00univ|url-access=registration|year=1961|publisher=University Book Exchange|location=Norman, Oklahoma}}
  • Man Meets Dog is published by Konrad Lorenz.

Technology

  • June 26 – Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the first civilian nuclear power station, is commissioned in the Soviet Union.{{cite web|title=Nuclear Power in Russia|publisher=World Nuclear Association|url=http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf45.html|access-date=2011-12-16|date=December 2011|archive-date=February 13, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130213052522/http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf45.html|url-status=dead}}
  • June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.[https://www.google.com/search?q=2682235&tbm=pts U.S. patent 2,682,235.]
  • September 30 – The submarine {{USS|Nautilus|SSN-571}}, the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy.
  • October 18 – Texas Instruments announces development of the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, manufactured in Indianapolis; it goes on sale the following month.
  • December 16 – The first synthetic diamond is produced.{{cite journal|last1=Bundy|first1=F. P.|last2=Hall|first2=H. T.|last3=Strong|first3=H. M.|last4=Wentorf|first4=R. H.|year=1955|title=Man-made diamonds|url=http://www.htracyhall.org/papers/19550028.pdf|url-status=dead|journal=Nature|volume=176|issue=4471|pages=51–55|bibcode=1955Natur.176...51B|doi=10.1038/176051a0|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140108123004/http://www.htracyhall.org/papers/19550028.pdf|archive-date=2014-01-08|s2cid=4266566}}
  • New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat.{{cite web|title=Sir William Hamilton OBE|url=http://www.hamiltonjet.co.nz/about_hamiltonjet/sir_william_hamilton|publisher=HamiltonJet|year=2007|access-date=2012-11-12}}
  • The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.{{cite web|title=Sixty years of the Federal Republic of Germany – a retrospective of everyday life|url=http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lp/prj/mtg/typ/bun/en4922236.htminventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/coffee.htm|access-date=2002-12-28|archive-date=February 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225023359/https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/index.html|url-status=dead}}
  • Staley T. McBrayer invents the Vanguard web offset press for newspaper printing in Fort Worth, Texas.{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-apr-18-me-staley18-story.html|title=Staley McBrayer, 92; Inventor of Offset Press for Newspaper Printing|date=2002-04-18|access-date=2017-10-19|newspaper=Los Angeles Times}}
  • The angle grinder is invented by German company Ackermann + Schmitt (Flex-Elektrowerkzeuge).

Awards

Births

Deaths

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:1954 In Science}}

Category:20th century in science

Category:1950s in science