1970 in science explained

The year 1970 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 11 – The Ohsumi satellite is launched, making Japan the fourth country to launch a satellite into orbit.
• March 31 – The Explorer 1 satellite reenters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
• April 11 – The Apollo 13 space mission is launched.
• April 17 – Apollo 13 returns safely to Earth.
• August 17 – Venera 7, the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from another planet, is launched.
• November 17 – Lunokhod 1, the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, lands on Mare Imbrium on the Moon after being released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.

Biology

• August – Songs of the Humpback Whale, produced by Roger Payne, is released, publicly demonstrating whale vocalization for the first time and becoming influential in public support for whale conservation.^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}
• The Parc naturel régional de Camargue is established in the south of France.

Chemistry

• August – Ulrich K. Laemmli's refinement of the SDS-PAGE method is published.^[5]

Computer science

• January 1 – Unix time begins at 00:00:00 UTC.
• June – The Datapoint 2200 is announced by the Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC).
• June–August – The programming language FLOW is devised by Jef Raskin.
• November 17 – The first United States patent for the computer mouse is issued to Douglas Engelbart.^[6]
• Bomber by Len Deighton, the first novel written on a word processor (the IBM MT/ST), is published in England.^[7]
• The first Pascal compiler is released by Niklaus Wirth.^[8]
• The Xerox PARC computer laboratory is opened in Palo Alto, California.

Earth sciences

• January 4 – The Tonghai earthquake (7.1) occurs in Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, killing an estimated 14,621 and injuring 26,783.
• May 24 – Drilling on the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins on the Kola Peninsula of Russia.

Mathematics

• Conway's Game of Life is devised by John Horton Conway.^[9]
• Kurt Gödel's ontological proof of the existence of God is circulated.^[10]

Medicine

• The Dubowitz Score for estimating the gestational age of babies is published by Lilly and Victor Dubowitz.^[11]
• The Exeter hip replacement stem is first implanted at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter, England.^[12]
• The first case of monkeypox in humans is identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.^[13]

Physics

• The GIM mechanism is predicted by Sheldon Glashow, John Iliopoulos and Luciano Maiani.^[14]

Psychology

• The minimal group paradigm is developed by Henri Tajfel.
• Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I is published by Konrad Lorenz.

Technology

• June 2 – The Cleddau Bridge collapses during construction in Wales, killing four and leading to the introduction of new standards for box girder bridges in the United Kingdom.^{[15] [16]}

Events

• June 19 – The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is signed into international law, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics – Alan Baker, Heisuke Hironaka, Sergei Novikov and John Griggs Thompson
• Nobel Prizes:
  • Physics – Hannes Alfvén, Louis Néel
  • Chemistry – Luis F. Leloir
  • Medicine – Bernard Katz, Ulf von Euler, Julius Axelrod
• Turing Award – James H. Wilkinson

Births

• March 27 – Eleanor Maguire, Irish-born neuropsychologist.
• August 1 – Elon Lindenstrauss, Israeli mathematician.
• September 3 – Stanislav Smirnov, Russian-born mathematician.

Deaths

• January 5 – Max Born (b. 1882), German physicist and recipient of the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics.^[17]
• January 27 – Marietta Blau (b. 1894), Austrian physicist.^[18]
• April 27 – Orii Hyōjirō (b. 1883), Japanese animal specimen collector.
• May 1 – Ralph Hartley (b. 1888), American electrical engineer.
• July 20 – Margaret Reed Lewis (b. 1881), American cell biologist.
• July 29 – Emanuel Miller (b. 1892), English child psychiatrist.
• August 1 – Otto Heinrich Warburg (b. 1883), German physiologist and winner of the 1931 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.^[19]
• September 22 – Vojtěch Jarník (b. 1897), Czech mathematician.

Notes and References

1. News: McLellan. Joseph. It's a Whale of a Song. 2022-11-28. The Washington Post. 1977-12-26.
2. Web site: Andersen. Kurt. How Pop Music Helped Save the Whales. Studio 360. https://web.archive.org/web/20150110135754/http://www.studio360.org/story/how-pop-music-helped-save-the-whales/. 2022-08-03. 2015-01-10.
3. Web site: Nature's greatest hit: The old and new songs of the humpback whale. David. Rothenberg. The Wire.
4. News: 'It always hits me hard': how a haunting album helped save the whales. Tim. Lewis. The Observer. 2020-12-06. London. www.theguardian.com.
5. Laemmli, U. K.. Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature. 227. 5259. 680–685. 1970. 5432063. 10.1038/227680a0. 1970Natur.227..680L. 3105149.
6. .
7. Web site: The Book-Writing Machine: What was the first novel ever written on a word processor?. Slate. 2013-03-01. 2016-02-21. Kirschenbaum. Matthew.
8. Book: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/10722581_1 . 10.1007/10722581_1 . The Development of Procedural Programming Languages Personal Contributions and Perspectives . Modular Programming Languages . Lecture Notes in Computer Science . 2000 . Wirth . Niklaus . 1897 . 1–10 . 978-3-540-67958-5 .
9. Book: Gardner, Martin. Martin Gardner

   . Martin Gardner. Mathematical Games – The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game "life". 223. Scientific American. October 1970. 120–123. 2011-06-26. 0-89454-001-7. registration.

10. Book: Dawson, John W. Jr.. Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Godel. A. K. Peters Ltd. Wellesley, Mass.. 1997. 1-56881-025-3.
11. News: Mercuri. Eugenio. 2016-05-08. Lilly Dubowitz obituary. The Guardian. London. 2020-06-24.
12. News: Robin Ling obituary. The Guardian. London. 2017-10-20. A. John. Timperley. 2018-01-07.
13. Web site: Monkeypox. CDC. 2017-10-15. 2015-05-11. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20171015113128/https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/index.html. 2017-10-15.
14. S. L.. Glashow. J.. Iliopoulos. L.. Maiani. 1970. Weak Interactions with Lepton–Hadron Symmetry. Physical Review D. 2. 1285–1292. 10.1103/PhysRevD.2.1285. 1970PhRvD...2.1285G. 7. 2011-11-11. 2012-07-12. https://archive.today/20120712140640/http://prd.aps.org/pdf/PRD/v2/i7/p1285_1. dead.
15. Book: Department of the Environment (Merrison Committee of Inquiry). Inquiry into the Basis of Design and Method of Erection of Steel Box Girder Bridges. HMSO. London. 1973.
16. News: How safe are our bridges?. BBC News Online. BBC. 2007-08-03. 2008-01-30.
17. News: Nobel prize winner dies . Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . (Pennsylvania, U.S.). Associated Press . 6 January 1970 . 26 .
18. Book: Halpen, Leopold E.. Marietta Blau. Marelene F.. Rayner-Canham. Geoffrey. Rayner-Canham. A Devotion to Their Science: Pioneer Women of Radioactivity. Montréal. McGill-Queen's University Press. 1997. 978-0-77351-642-7. 203.
19. Book: Roswitha Schmid. Hans Adolf Krebs. Otto Warburg: Cell Physiologist, Biochemist, and Eccentric. Clarendon Press. 1981. v.