1972 in science

• January 5 – President of the United States Richard Nixon orders the development of a Space Shuttle program.
• February 4 – Mariner 9 sends pictures from Mars.
• February 21 – The Soviet uncrewed spacecraft Luna 20 lands on the Moon.
• March 2 – Launch of Pioneer 10 spacecraft.
• April 16 – Apollo 16 launched.
• June 30 – The International Time Bureau adds the first leap second to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
• July 23 – The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.
• December 7 – Apollo 17 launched with three astronauts and five mice, and The Blue Marble photograph of the Earth is taken.
• December 11 – NASA astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt land on the Moon and begin a three-day exploration.

• February – S. J. Singer and Garth L. Nicolson describe the fluid mosaic model of the functional cell membrane.{{cite journal|author=Singer, S. J.|author2=Nicolson, G. L.|title=The fluid mosaic model of the structure of cell membranes|journal=Science|volume=175|issue=4023|pages=720–31|date=1972|pmid=4333397|doi=10.1126/science.175.4023.720|s2cid=83851531 }}
• September – Geoffrey Burnstock proposes the existence of a non-adrenergic, non-cholinergic (NANC) neurotransmitter, which he identifies as adenosine triphosphate (ATP), originating the term 'purinergic signalling'.{{cite journal|first=Burnstock|last=G.|title=Purinergic nerves|journal=Pharmacological Reviews|volume=24|pages=509–81|year=1972|issue=3 |pmid=4404211}}
• October 1 – The first publication reporting the production of a recombinant DNA molecule, by Paul Berg and colleagues, marks the birth of modern molecular biology methodology.{{cite journal | last1 = Jackson | first1= David A. | last2=Symons |first2=Robert H | last3= Berg |first3= Paul | year=1972 | title = Biochemical Method for Inserting New Genetic Information into DNA of Simian Virus 40: Circular SV40 DNA Molecules Containing Lambda Phage Genes and the Galactose Operon of Escherichia coli | journal =Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America| volume = 69 | issue=10 | pages = 2904–2909 | doi=10.1073/pnas.69.10.2904 | pmid=4342968 | pmc=389671| bibcode=1972PNAS...69.2904J | doi-access= free }}
• Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould publish their landmark paper on punctuated equilibrium.{{cite book|last1=Eldredge|first1=N.|last2=Gould|first2=S. J.|chapter=Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism|title=Models in Paleobiology|editor=Schopf, T. J. M.|pages=82–115|publisher=Freeman, Cooper|location=San Francisco|year=1972}}
• Socorro doves (Zenaida graysoni) last seen in the wild. The species precariously survives in captivity. A reintroduction program is being prepared.

• April 6 – Cray Research founded.{{cite web|title=Cray Timeline|url=http://www.cray.com/Assets/PDF/about/CrayTimeline.pdf|publisher=Cray|accessdate=2011-04-04|archive-date=2011-03-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110331035544/http://www.cray.com/Assets/PDF/about/CrayTimeline.pdf|url-status=dead}}
• May – Magnavox release the first home video game console which can be connected to a television set – the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph H. Baer.{{cite book|title=Game Industry Career Guide|last1=Moore|first1=Michael E.|last2=Novak|first2=Jeannie|year=2010|publisher=Cengage Learning|location=Delmar|isbn=978-1-4283-7647-2|page=7|quote=In 1966, Ralph H. Baer ... pitched an idea ... to create interactive games to be played on the television. Over the next two years, his team developed the first video game system—and in 1968, they demonstrated the "Brown Box," a device on which several games could be played and that used a light gun to shoot targets on the screen. After several more years of development, the system was licensed by Magnavox in 1970 and the first game console system, the Odyssey, was released in 1972 at the then high price of $100.}}
• July 12 – First C compiler released.{{cite book |first1=Ken |last1=Thompson |first2=Dennis M. |last2=Ritchie |title=UNIX Programmer's Manual, Second Edition |date=June 12, 1972 |publisher=Bell Telephone Laboratories |url=http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/UnixArchive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/1972_stuff/unix_2nd_edition_manual.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161006034736/http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/UnixArchive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/1972_stuff/unix_2nd_edition_manual.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=2016-10-06 }}
• October – The First International Conference on Computer Communications is held in Washington, D.C., and hosts the first public demonstration of ARPAnet, a precursor of the Internet.
• November 29 – Atari release the production version of Pong, one of the first video games, devised by Nolan Bushnell and Allan Alcorn.
• Karen Spärck Jones introduces the concept of inverse document frequency (idf) weighting in information retrieval.{{cite journal|last=Spärck Jones|first=K.|doi=10.1108/eb026526|title=A Statistical Interpretation of Term Specificity and Its Application in Retrieval|journal=Journal of Documentation|volume=28|pages=11–21|year=1972|citeseerx=10.1.1.115.8343|s2cid=2996187 }}
• Write-only memory is devised as a joke in Signetics.{{cite web|first=Bob|last=Pease|title=The origin of the WOM – the "Write Only Memory"|url=http://portal.national.com/rap/Story/WOMorigin.html|publisher=National Semiconductor|accessdate=2012-11-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110910041413/http://portal.national.com/rap/Story/WOMorigin.html|archive-date=2011-09-10|url-status=dead}}

• February 8 – First Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) defined at the Silurian-Devonian boundary at Klonk in the Czech Republic.{{cite journal|last1=Chlupáč|first1=Ivo|last2=Hladil|first2=Jindrich|title=The global stratotype section and point of the Silurian-Devonian boundary|journal=CFS Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg|date=January 2000|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260135817|access-date=2020-12-07}}

• January – A Blueprint for Survival first published as a special edition of The Ecologist magazine in the United Kingdom.{{cite web|url=http://www.theecologist.org/theecologist/266662/about_the_ecologist.html|title=About The Ecologist|publisher=The Ecologist|accessdate=2012-02-10}}
• James Lovelock first refers to the Gaia hypothesis in print.{{cite journal|first=J. E.|last=Lovelock|title=Gaia as seen through the atmosphere|date=August 1972|journal=Atmospheric Environment|volume=6|issue=8|pages=579–580|issn=0004-6981|doi=10.1016/0004-6981(72)90076-5|bibcode=1972AtmEn...6..579L}}
• The Climatic Research Unit is founded by climatologist Hubert Lamb at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

• Daniel Quillen formulates higher algebraic K-theory.
• Daniel Gorenstein announces a 16-step program for completing the classification of finite simple groups.{{cite journal|last=Gorenstein|first=D.|title=The classification of finite simple groups. I. Simple groups and local analysis|doi=10.1090/S0273-0979-1979-14551-8|year=1979|journal=Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society |series=New Series |issn=0002-9904|volume=1|issue=1|pages=43–199|mr=513750|doi-access=free}} Appendix.
• Richard M. Karp shows that the Hamiltonian cycle problem is NP-complete.

• January 31 – Immunosuppressive effect of ciclosporin discovered by a team at Sandoz, Basel, under Hartmann F. Stähelin.
• Harvey J. Alter identifies the presence of hepatitis C virus.
• Tu Youyou and collaborators obtain a pure extract of the antiplasmodial drug artemisinin.
• Archie Cochrane publishes Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services in the U.K.
• John Yudkin publishes Pure, White and Deadly in the U.K., warning of the dangers of sucrose in diet.
• The last major epidemic of smallpox in Europe breaks out in Yugoslavia.

• 00:00:00 UTC matches 00:00:10 TAI exactly and the tick rate of UTC is changed to match TAI exactly.{{cite book|editor-last=Blair|editor-first=Byron E.|title=Time and Frequency: Theory and Fundamentals|url=https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/MONO/nbsmonograph140.pdf|publisher=National Bureau of Standards|year=1974|page=32}}

• Kielan-Jawarowska and Rinchen Barsbold report the associated remains of a Velociraptor and Protoceratops apparently killed and preserved while fighting.

• Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky begin to publish together on cognitive bias and heuristics in judgment and decision-making.

• February 1 – The first scientific hand-held calculator (labeled Hewlett-Packard, later designated the HP-35) is introduced, at a price of $395.00.
• July 10 – Jack Cover files {{US Patent|3803463}} for the original form of Taser electroshock weapon.
• English inventor Peter Powell develops a steerable dual-line kite.

• Nobel Prizes
• Physics – John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer
• Chemistry – Christian B. Anfinsen, Stanford Moore, William H. Stein
• Medicine – Gerald Edelman, Rodney R Porter
• Turing Award – Edsger Dijkstra

• March 31 – Evan Williams, American Internet entrepreneur.
• April 5 – Nima Arkani-Hamed, Canadian-American theoretical physicist.
• June 21 – Warren Lyford DeLano, American bioinformatician and open source advocate (d. 2009).
• unknown date – Kathy Vivas, Venezuelan astrophysicist{{cite news|last=Graterol|first=Javier|date=18 May 2009|title=La astronomía es una ciencia apasionante|work=El Nacional}}

• February 20 – Maria Goeppert Mayer (b. 1906), German-American theoretical physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• May 4 – Edward Calvin Kendall (b. 1886), American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• May 8 – Beatrice Helen Worsley (b. 1921), Canadian computer scientist.
• August 11 – Max Theiler (b. 1899), South African-born American virologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• August 22 – Ștefan Procopiu (b. 18990), Romanian physicist.
• August 25 – Lucien Bull (b. 1876), Irish-born French pioneer in chronophotography.
• October 1 – Louis Leakey (b. 1903), British paleoanthropologist.
• November 25 – Henri Coandă (b. 1886), Romanian aeronautical engineer.

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Category:20th century in science

Category:1970s in science