1974 in science explained

The year 1974 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 8 – After 84 days in space, the last crew of the temporary American space station Skylab return to Earth.
• February 13–15 – Sagittarius A*, thought to be the location of a supermassive black hole, is identified by Bruce Balick and Robert Brown using the baseline interferometer of the United States National Radio Astronomy Observatory.^[1]
• November 16 – Arecibo message transmitted from Arecibo Observatory (Puerto Rico) to Messier 13.
• Hawking radiation is predicted by Stephen Hawking.^[2]

Computer Science

• The Mark-8 microcomputer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor is designed by Jonathan Titus. It is announced on the cover of the July 1974 issue of Radio-Electronics as "Your Personal Minicomputer".

History of science

• F. W. Winterbotham publishes The Ultra secret: the inside story of Operation Ultra, Bletchley Park and Enigma, the first popular account of cryptography carried out at Bletchley Park during World War II.

Mathematics

• Yves Hellegouarch proposes a connection between Fermat's Last Theorem and the Frey curve.^[3]

Medicine

• September 25  - 1974 – The first "Tommy John surgery" for replacement of ulnar collateral ligament of elbow joint is performed by Frank Jobe in the United States.
• Identification of controlled trials in perinatal medicine, as advocated by Archie Cochrane, begins in Cardiff, Wales.^[4]
• Henry Heimlich describes the "Heimlich Maneuver" as a treatment for choking.^[5]

Paleoanthropology and paleontology

• November 24 – A group of paleoanthropologists discover remains of a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, nicknaming her "Lucy".

Physics

• May 18 – "Smiling Buddha", India's first nuclear test explosion takes place underground at Pokhran.^[6]
• "November Revolution": J/ψ meson, the first particle found to contain a charm quark, discovered by teams at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, led by Samuel Ting,^[7] and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, led by Burton Richter.^[8]

Physiology

• May – British neuroscientists John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz announce their isolation of the peptides met- and leu-enkephalin.

Psychology

• Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins is published by Konrad Lorenz.
• Leon Kamin demonstrates that Sir Cyril Burt's influential research into heritability of IQ using twin studies shows evidence of statistical falsification.^[9]

Technology

• June 26 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time, to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, the first use of barcode technology in American retailing.^[10]
• Stephen Salter invents the "Salter Duck", a wave energy converter.

Zoology

• January 7 – Outbreak of 4-year Gombe Chimpanzee War in Tanzania, reported by Jane Goodall.
• Digital dermatitis in cattle identified in Italy by Cheli and Mortellaro.

Other events

• Rubik's Cube invented by Ernő Rubik.^[11]

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Enrico Bombieri and David Mumford
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Martin Ryle, Antony Hewish^[12]
  • Chemistry – Paul J. Flory
  • Medicine – Albert Claude, Christian de Duve, George Emil Palade
• Turing Award – Donald Knuth

Births

• March 10 – Biz Stone, American computing entrepreneur
• August 8 – Manjul Bhargava, Canadian-born mathematician
• August 11 – Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, English cognitive neuroscientist
• September 28 – Sunil Kumar Verma, Indian biologist

Deaths

• February 4 – S. N. Bose, Indian physicist (b. 1894)
• April 12 – Cornelis Simon Meijer, Dutch mathematician (b. 1904)
• May 4 – Ludwig Koch, German-born British animal sound recordist (b. 1881)
• May 18 – Harry Ricardo, English mechanical engineer (b. 1885)
• May 22 – Irmgard Flügge-Lotz (b. 1903), German-American mathematician and aerospace engineer
• June 28 – Vannevar Bush, American science administrator (b. 1890)
• July 3 – Sergey Lebedev, Soviet Russian computer scientist (b. 1902)
• August 22 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born British scientific polymath (b. 1908)

Notes and References

1. Book: Melia, Fulvio. The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole. Princeton University Press. 2007. 978-0-691-13129-0. 2.
2. Hawking. S. W.. 1974-03-01. Black hole explosions?. Nature. 248. 5443. 30. 10.1038/248030a0. 1974Natur.248...30H. 4290107 .
3. Hellegouarch. Yves. Points d'ordre 2p^h sur les courbes elliptiques. 0379507. 1974. Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Matematyczny. Acta Arithmetica. 0065-1036. 26. 3. 253–263. 10.4064/aa-26-3-253-263. free.
4. Web site: About the Cochrane Library. The Cochrane Library. 2011-01-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20110105124021/http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/AboutTheCochraneLibrary.html#ABOUT. 2011-01-05. dead.
5. H.. Heimlich . Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary. Emergency Medicine . June 1974.
6. Web site: India's Nuclear Weapons Program – Smiling Buddha: 1974. Nuclear Weapon Archive. 2001. 2011-05-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20110519083726/http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaSmiling.html. 19 May 2011 . live.
7. Aubert, J. J.. 2 December 1974. Experimental Observation of a Heavy Particle J. Physical Review Letters. 33. 1404–6. 10.1103/PhysRevLett.33.1404. 1974PhRvL..33.1404A. 23. etal. free.
8. Augustin, J.-E.. 2 December 1974. Discovery of a Narrow Resonance in e⁺e⁻ Annihilation. Physical Review Letters. 33. 1406–8. 10.1103/PhysRevLett.33.1406. 1974PhRvL..33.1406A. 23. etal. free.
9. News: Gillie. O.. 1976-10-24. Crucial data was faked by eminent psychologist. London. The Sunday Times.
10. Web site: Barcode birthday: 60 years since patent. Zoe. Kleinman. BBC News. 2012-10-07. 2013-06-29.
11. Book: Fotheringham, William. Fotheringham's Sporting Pastimes. Anova Books. 2007. 50. 978-1-86105-953-6.
12. Web site: 6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism . https://web.archive.org/web/20190903184929/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/5/130519-women-scientists-overlooked-dna-history-science/ . dead . September 3, 2019 . National Geographic News . 19 January 2021 . en . 19 May 2013.