1959 in science

• January 2 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 is launched by a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; the first man-made object to attain escape velocity, it is intended to impact Earth's Moon, but an error causes it instead to become the first spacecraft to fly by the Moon and the first man-made object to enter heliocentric orbit.
• February 6 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.
• February 17 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, is launched to measure cloud cover for the United States Navy.
• March 3 – Lunar probe Pioneer 4 becomes the first American object to escape dominance by Earth's gravity.
• April 9 – NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first United States astronauts, later known as the 'Mercury Seven'.
• May 28 – Jupiter AM-18 rocket launches two primates, Miss Baker and Miss Able, into space from Cape Canaveral in the United States along with living microorganisms and plant seeds. Successful recovery makes them the first living beings to return safely to Earth after space flight.
• June 25 – A KH-1 Corona satellite, believed to be the first operational spy satellite, is launched as science mission "Discoverer 4" from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a Thor-Agena rocket.
• July 7 – At 14:28 UT Venus occults the star Regulus. The rare event (which will next occur on October 1, 2044) is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of Venus' atmosphere.
• August 7 – The United States launches the Explorer 6 satellite from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral.
• August 14 – Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from orbit.
• September 14 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to crash on Earth's Moon.
• September 19 – Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison establish the scientific rationale for SETI with the publishing of their seminal paper "Searching for Interstellar Communications" in Nature.
• October 7 – Russian probe Luna 3 sends back the first images of the far side of Earth's Moon.
• October 13 – The United States launches research satellite Explorer 7.
• November 24 – Yardymli meteorite makes a landfall in Azerbaijan.
• December 4 – Little Joe 2, a mission in the Mercury program, carries Sam, a rhesus macaque monkey, close to the edge of space.
• Coma Berenicids discovered.{{cite web|url=http://meteorshowersonline.com/showers/coma_berenicids.html|title=Coma Berenicids|work=Meteor Showers Online|accessdate=2011-11-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101125061207/http://meteorshowersonline.com/showers/coma_berenicids.html|archive-date=2010-11-25|url-status=dead}}
• First successful test of a nuclear thermal rocket engine, as part of Project Rover at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States under Raemer Schreiber.{{cite news|newspaper=The New York Times|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/31/us/re-schreiber-88-nuclear-bomb-physicist.html|accessdate=2013-10-04|title=R. E. Schreiber, 88, Nuclear Bomb Physicist|first=Eric|last=Pace|date=31 December 1998}}

• January 1 – Cultivars of plants named after this date must be named in a modern language, not in Latin.
• March 26 – Jersey Zoo (later Durrell Wildlife Park) established by Gerald Durrell.
• August 8 – Min Chueh Chang reports the first mammals, a litter of rabbits, grown from ova having undergone in vitro fertilisation and transferred to a surrogate mother.{{cite journal|title=Fertilization of Rabbit Ova in vitro|pages=466–67|first=M. C.|last=Chang|doi=10.1038/184466a0|pmid=13809155|journal=Nature|year=1959|volume=184|issue=4684|bibcode = 1959Natur.184..466C }}{{cite web|first=Roy O.|last=Greep|title=Min Chueh Chang|url=http://books.nap.edu//html/biomems/mchang.html|work=Biographical Memoirs|publisher=United States National Academy of Sciences|year=1991|accessdate=2011-08-15}}
• The term pheromone is coined.{{cite journal|doi=10.1038/183055a0|author1=Karlson Peter|author2=Lüscher Martin|year=1959|title=Pheromones: a new term for a class of biologically active substances|journal=Nature|volume=183|issue=4653|pages=55–56|pmid=13622694|bibcode=1959Natur.183...55K}}
• Pierre-Paul Grassé invents the theory of stigmergy to explain the behavior of nest building in termites.{{cite journal|first=P.-P.|last=Grassé|title=La reconstruction du nid et les coordinations inter-individuelles chez Belicositermes natalensis et Cubitermes sp. La théorie de la Stigmergie: Essai d’interprétation du comportement des termites constructeurs|journal=Insectes Sociaux|issue=6|pages=41–80|year=1959}}
• The Caspian tiger becomes extinct in Iran.

• B. J. Davis and Leonard Ornstein first describe the use of acrylamide in gel electrophoresis at a scientific meeting.{{cite web|title=Disc Electrophoresis |url=http://www.pipeline.com/~lenornst/DiscElectrophoresis.html |accessdate=2011-10-16 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110926213111/http://www.pipeline.com/~lenornst/DiscElectrophoresis.html |archivedate=2011-09-26 }}

• December – The specification for the programming language COBOL is completed.
• IBM ship the transistor-based IBM 1401 mainframe.
• Grigore Moisil publishes Teoria algebrică a mecanismelor automate [Algebraic theory of automatic machines], on automata theory, in Bucharest.

• Society for the History of Technology begins publication of the journal Technology and Culture.

• July 21 – The inaugural International Mathematical Olympiad, a competition for pre-university students, is held, in Romania.
• October – Martin Gardner presents the Three Prisoners problem in probability theory.{{cite journal|last=Gardner|first=Martin|title=Mathematical Games: Problems involving questions of probability and ambiguity|journal=Scientific American|date=October 1959|volume=201|issue=4|pages=174–182|doi=10.1038/scientificamerican1059-174|bibcode=1959SciAm.201d.174G}}{{cite journal|last=Gardner|first=Martin|title=Mathematical Games: How three modern mathematicians disproved a celebrated conjecture of Leonhard Euler|journal=Scientific American|date=November 1959|volume=201|issue=5|page=188|doi=10.1038/scientificamerican1159-181|bibcode=1959SciAm.201e.181G}}
• Edsger W. Dijkstra rediscovers 'Prim's algorithm'.
• Kenkichi Iwasawa initiates Iwasawa theory.{{cite journal|last=Iwasawa|first=Kenkichi|title=On Γ-extensions of algebraic number fields|doi=10.1090/S0002-9904-1959-10317-7|mr=0124316|year=1959|journal=Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society|volume=65|issue=4|pages=183–226|zbl=0089.02402|issn=0002-9904|doi-access=free}}

• July – The Japanese medical research group studying Minamata disease comes to the conclusion that mercury is the cause.{{cite web|url=http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu35ie/uu35ie0c.htm|title=Minamata disease|publisher=United Nations University|accessdate=2010-10-17}}
• Joseph Murray performs the world's first successful allotransplantation.{{cite journal|first=Calixto|last=Machado|title=The first organ transplant from a brain-dead donor|journal=Neurology|year=2005|volume=64|pages=1938–42|issue=11|doi=10.1212/01.wnl.0000163515.09793.cb|pmid=15955947}}
• Georges Mathé, a French oncologist, performs the first bone marrow transplant on five Yugoslavian nuclear workers whose own marrow has been damaged by intense irradiation caused by a criticality accident at the Vinča Nuclear Institute, but all of these transplants are rejected.{{cite web|last=McLaughlin|first=Thomas P. |title=A Review of Criticality Accidents|publisher=Los Alamos National Laboratory|work=CSRIC|url=http://www.csirc.net/docs/reports/la-13638.pdf|page=96|quote=Radiation doses were intense, being estimated at 205, 320, 410, 415, 422, and 433 rem.74 Of the six persons present, one died and the other five recovered after severe cases of radiation sickness.|date=May 2000|display-authors=etal|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070926101253/http://www.csirc.net/docs/reports/la-13638.pdf|archive-date=2007-09-26}}{{cite web|url=http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1958YUG1.html|title=Vinca reactor accident, 1958|first=Wm. Robert|last=Johnston|work=Database of radiological incidents and related events – Johnston's Archive|date=2005-09-14|accessdate=2012-07-02}}{{cite news|title=Dr. Georges Mathé, Transplant Pioneer, Dies at 88|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/health/research/21mathe.html|date=2010-10-20|last=Martin|first=Douglas}}
• First known case of human HIV, in the Belgian Congo.{{cite book|last=Pence|first=G. E.|year=2008|chapter=Preventing the Global Spread of AIDS|title=Medical Ethics: Accounts of the Cases That Shaped and Define Medical Ethics|url=https://archive.org/details/classiccasesinme0000penc|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/classiccasesinme0000penc/page/330 330]|location=New York|publisher=McGraw-Hill}}

• July 17 – Paranthropus boisei (originally designated Zinjanthropus), an Australopithecine, is found in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanganyika by Mary and Louis Leakey, dating from between 2.6 and 1.1 million years BP.
• First femur of Arlington Springs Man is found on Santa Rosa Island, California, by Phil C. Orr. The remains are subsequently dated to 13,000 years BP, making them potentially the oldest known human remains in North America.

• Yakir Aharonov and David Bohm predict the Aharonov–Bohm effect.
• Austria joins CERN.
• December 29 – Richard Feynman delivers a lecture "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", anticipating the field of nanotechnology.

• June 9 – The USS George Washington is launched at Groton, Connecticut, as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles (December 30 – commissioned).
• June 14 – At Disneyland in Anaheim, California, new rides are opened in the Tomorrowland area, designed by Bob Gurr:
• The Disneyland Monorail, the world's first regularly operating passenger-carrying monorail (Alweg system).{{cite book|last=Strodder|first=Chris|title=The Disneyland Encyclopedia|year=2017|publisher=Santa Monica Press|isbn=978-1595800909|edition=3rd|pages=336–337}}
• The Matterhorn Bobsleds, the world's first tubular steel roller coaster, constructed by Arrow Development.{{cite web|website=Aceonline.org|url=http://www.aceonline.org/CoasterAwards/?type=3|publisher=ACE|title=Coaster Landmark Awards|access-date=2025-04-17|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101212021831/http://aceonline.org/CoasterAwards/?type=3|archive-date=2010-12-12|url-status=dead}}
• August 13 – First automobile delivered with the modern form of three-point seat belt developed by Nils Bohlin for Volvo in Sweden.{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-man-who-saved-a-million-lives-nils-bohlin--inventor-of-the-seatbelt-1773844.html|title=The man who saved a million lives: Nils Bohlin - inventor of the seat belt|newspaper=The Independent|location=London|date=2009-08-19|access-date=2009-12-08}}
• August 31 – Frank Der Yuen is granted a United States patent for the jet bridge (passenger boarding bridge).{{cite web|title=Apparatus for facilitating the loading and unloading of passengers and cargo : US Grant US3046908A|url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US3046908}}
• September 16 – The Xerox 914, the first plain paper copier, is introduced to the public.
• November – The MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, is invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in the United States.{{cite journal|url=https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/metal-oxide-semiconductor-mos-transistor-demonstrated/|title=1960 - Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) Transistor Demonstrated|journal=The Silicon Engine|publisher=Computer History Museum}}{{cite book |last=Bassett |first=Ross Knox |title=To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-up Companies and the Rise of MOS Technology |date=2007 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|isbn=9780801886393 |page=22 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UUbB3d2UnaAC&pg=PA22}} It revolutionizes the electronics industry,{{cite book |last1=Chan |first1=Yi-Jen |title=Studies of InAIAs/InGaAs and GaInP/GaAs heterostructure FET's for high speed applications |date=1992 |publisher=University of Michigan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sV4eAQAAMAAJ |page=1 |quote=The Si MOSFET has revolutionized the electronics industry and as a result impacts our daily lives in almost every conceivable way.}} becomes the fundamental building block of the Information Age{{cite book |last=Wong |first=Kit Po |title=Electrical Engineering|volume=II |date=2009 |publisher=EOLSS Publications |isbn=9781905839780 |page=7}} and goes on to become the most widely manufactured device in history.{{cite web |title=13 Sextillion & Counting: The Long & Winding Road to the Most Frequently Manufactured Human Artifact in History |url=https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/13-sextillion-counting-the-long-winding-road-to-the-most-frequently-manufactured-human-artifact-in-history/ |date=2018-03-02|publisher=Computer History Museum|access-date=2019-07-28}}{{cite book |last=Baker |first=R. Jacob |title=CMOS: Circuit Design, Layout and Simulation |date=2011 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1118038239 |page=7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kxYhNrOKuJQC&pg=PA7}}
• Agfa introduces the first fully automatic camera, the Optima.
• Eveready Battery engineer Lewis Urry invents the long-lasting alkaline battery.
• Gordon Gould publishes the term Laser.{{cite book|last=Gould|first=R. Gordon|year=1959|chapter=The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation|editor=Franken, P. A.|editor2=Sands, R. H.|title=The Ann Arbor Conference on Optical Pumping, the University of Michigan, 15 June through 18 June 1959|page=128|oclc=02460155}}
• Pilkington Brothers patent the float glass process invented by Alastair Pilkington.{{cite book|editor=Challoner, Jack|title=1001 Inventions That Changed the World|location=London|publisher=Cassell|year=2009|isbn=978-1-84403-611-0|page=754}}

• May 7 – English scientist and novelist C. P. Snow delivers an influential Rede Lecture on The Two Cultures, concerning a perceived breakdown of communication between the sciences and humanities, in the Senate House, University of Cambridge. It is subsequently published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.
• Lois Graham becomes the first woman in the United States to earn a PhD in mechanical engineering, at Illinois Institute of Technology.{{cite thesis|last=Graham|first=Lois|title=Effect of adding a combustible to atmosphere surrounding diffusion flame|year=1959|oclc=45226021}}{{cite web|url=https://alumni.iit.edu/alumni-awards-2015-graham|title=Alumni Awards 2015: Lifetime Achievement Award: Lois Graham (M.S. ME '49, Ph.D. '59)|year=2015|publisher=Illinois Institute of Technology|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181120222616/https://alumni.iit.edu/alumni-awards-2015-graham|archive-date=2018-11-20|url-status=live|access-date=2018-11-20}}

• Nobel Prizes
• Physics – Emilio Gino Segrè, – Owen Chamberlain
• Chemistry – Jaroslav Heyrovský
• Medicine – Severo Ochoa, Arthur Kornberg

• March 9 – Takaaki Kajita, Japanese nuclear physicist (Nobel Prize in Physics 2015).
• May 27 – Donna Strickland, Canadian physicist (Nobel Prize in Physics 2018).
• August 3 – Koichi Tanaka, Japanese chemist (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2002).
• August 29 – Stephen Wolfram, British-born mathematician.
• September 7 – Drew Weissman, American biochemist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013).{{cite news|first=James|last=Gallagher|title=Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines|work=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66983060|date=2023-10-02|accessdate=2023-10-02}}
• September 22 – Saul Perlmutter, American astrophysicist (Nobel Prize in Physics 2011).
• October 16 – Pamela C. Rasmussen, American ornithologist.
• December 25 – Michael P. Anderson (died 2003), American astronaut.

• January 21 – Frances Gertrude McGill (born 1882), pioneering Canadian forensic pathologist.
• February 15 – Sir Owen Richardson (born 1879), English physicist (Nobel Prize in Physics 1928).
• June 9 – Adolf Windaus (born 1876), German chemist (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1928).
• June 11 – Grantly Dick-Read (born 1890), English obstetrician.
• September 30 – Ross Granville Harrison (born 1870), American physiologist.
• October 29
• Samuel James Cameron (born 1878), Scottish obstetrician.
• Edith Clarke (born 1883), American electrical engineer, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame
• November 15 – C. T. R. Wilson (born 1869), Scottish physicist (Nobel Prize in Physics 1927).

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Category:20th century in science

Category:1950s in science