1994 in science explained

The year 1994 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Archaeology and paleontology

• March 31 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull, significant in the study of human evolution.
• December 18 – Chauvet Cave discovered by Jean-Marie Chauvet and other speleologists near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc in the Ardèche department of southern France, containing some of the earliest known cave paintings of animals, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life.^{[1] [2]}
• The Australopithecus skeleton "Little Foot" is identified in South Africa.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 8 – Soyuz TM-18: Valeri Polyakov begins his 437.7-day orbit of the Earth, eventually setting the world record for days spent in orbit.
• February 3 – Asteroid (136617) 1994 CC is discovered.
• February 21 – Revealing of the first photo of Pluto and its moon Charon taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.
• July 16–22 – The fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 impact the planet Jupiter.
• July 21 – R. Ibata, M. Irwin, and G. Gilmore discover the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, considered the closest galaxy to the Milky Way until 2003.^[3]
• October 13 (UTC) – NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft after a successful mission as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus and is presumed to burn up in the atmosphere.
• Asteroid 7484 Dogo Onsen is discovered by Masahiro Koishikawa.
• 14032 Mego is discovered.
• 8C 1435+63 is discovered and at z=4.25 becomes the most distant known galaxy.^{[4] [5]}

Biology and medicine

• May 18 – The Flavr Savr, a genetically modified tomato, is deemed safe for consumption by the FDA, becoming the first commercially grown genetically engineered food to be granted a license for human consumption.
• September 10 – Wollemia (the 'Wollemi Pine'), previously known only from fossils, is discovered living in remote rainforest gorges in the Wollemi National Park of New South Wales by David Noble.^[6]
• October – First public demonstration of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.^[7]
• December 15 – Publication of the "Fukuda" clinical description of chronic fatigue syndrome.^[8]
• The Dingiso or tree-kangaroo of Western New Guinea is first seen by scientists.^[9]
• Gilbert's potoroo is rediscovered in Australia having been thought extinct.
• Flora of China begins publication.
• The first gene linked to Alzheimer's disease is discovered. No new linked genes would be found until 2009.^[10]
• The BRCA1 gene is cloned by scientists at University of Utah, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and Myriad Genetics.^[11]
• The Western Hemisphere is declared free of polio.

Chemistry

• November 9 – Darmstadtium first detected at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg, under the direction of Prof. Sigurd Hofmann.^[12]
• December 8 – The first three atoms of Roentgenium are observed by an international team led by Sigurd Hofmann at the GSI in Darmstadt.^[13]

Computer science

• January – Jerry Yang and David Filo create "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web", a hierarchically organised website, while studying at Stanford University; in April it is renamed Yahoo!^[14]
• March 14
  • Apple Computer, Inc. releases the Power Macintosh, the first Macintosh computers to use the new PowerPC microprocessors.
  • The Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released after over two years of development.
• April 12 – Husband-and-wife law partners Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel post the first massive commercial spam on Usenet in the United States.
• July 5 – Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.
• c. August – Pizza Hut becomes the first restaurant to offer online food ordering, in California.^{[15] [16]}
• October 1 – The World Wide Web Consortium is founded by Tim Berners-Lee, becoming the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.
• c. November – Online service America Online purchases Booklink as a browser to offer its users a gateway to the World Wide Web for the first time. This marks the beginning of easy accessibility of the Web to the average person in the U.S.^[17] In 1996, AOL replaces Booklink with a browser based on Internet Explorer, allegedly in exchange for inclusion of AOL in Windows.^[18]
• December 3 – Sony release the PlayStation fifth generation home video game console in Japan.^[19]
• December 15 – Netscape launch the Netscape Navigator web browser, for which it creates HTTP Secure.^[20]
• Leonard Adleman describes the experimental use of DNA as a computational system to solve a seven-node instance of the Hamiltonian path problem, the first known instance of the successful use of DNA to compute an algorithm.^[21]
• Penguin Books offer Peter James' novel Host on two floppy disks as "the world's first electronic novel".^[22]

Earth sciences

• December 21 – Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano, dormant for 47 years, resumes eruption.

Mathematics

• September 19 – Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem: English mathematician Andrew Wiles devises a new approach to the final proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, sending his proof to colleagues on October 6 and submitting for publication on October 24.
• The tennis ball theorem is first published under this name by Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold.^[23]

Molecular biology

• Green fluorescent protein is successfully expressed in C. elegans, starting its career as a fluorescent marker.

Technology

• May 6 – The Channel Tunnel, which took 15,000 workers more than seven years to complete, officially opens between England and France; it will enable passengers to travel by rail between the two countries in 35 minutes.
• August 16 – The world's first smartphone, the IBM Simon, goes on sale.^[24]
• The first high-brightness blue LED is achieved, an invention that earns the researchers a Nobel Prize in 2014.^[25]
• QR code invented by Japanese company Denso.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics

Efim Isakovich Zelmanov, Pierre-Louis Lions, Jean Bourgain and Jean-Christophe Yoccoz

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Bertram N. Brockhouse, Clifford G. Shull
  • Chemistry – George A. Olah
  • Medicine – Alfred G. Gilman, Martin Rodbell
• Turing Award – Edward Feigenbaum, Raj Reddy
• Wollaston Medal for Geology – William Jason Morgan

Deaths

• January 25 – Stephen Cole Kleene (b. 1909), American mathematician.
• April 17 – Roger Wolcott Sperry (b. 1913), American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• May 12 – Erik Erikson (b. 1902), German American psychologist.
• July 29 – Dorothy Hodgkin (b. 1910), British biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• August 19 – Linus Pauling (b. 1901), American chemist.
• August 29 – Arthur Mourant (b. 1904), Jersiais hematologist.
• October 28 – Calvin Souther Fuller (b. 1902), American physical chemist at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Notes and References

1. Book: Chauvet. Jean-Marie. Eliette Brunel. Deschamps. Christian. Hillaire. Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave. 1996. Harry N. Abrams. New York. 978-0-8109-3232-6. registration.
2. Book: Clottes, Jean. Paul G. Bahn (translator). Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times. 2003. University of Utah Press. Salt Lake City. 978-0-87480-758-5. 214.
3. 1994Natur.370..194I. A dwarf satellite galaxy in Sagittarius. Ibata. R. A.. Gilmore. G.. Irwin. M. J.. 370. 1994. 194–196. Nature. 10.1038/370194a0. 6486. 4335789 .
4. 1994MNRAS.271..504L. 8C 1435+635: A radio galaxy at z = 4.25. Lacy. M.. Miley. G.. Rawlings. S.. Saunders. R.. Dickinson. M.. Garrington. S.. Maddox. S.. Pooley. G.. Steidel. C. C.. Bremer. M.N.. Cotter. G.. van Ojik. R.. Röttgering. H.. Warner. P.. 271. 2. 1994. 504–512. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 10.1093/mnras/271.2.504 . free.
5. astro-ph/9411007. Spinrad. Hyron. Keck Observations of the Most Distant Galaxy: 8C1435+63 at z=4.25. The Astrophysical Journal. 438. L51. Dey. Arjun. Graham. James R. 1994. 10.1086/187713. 1995ApJ...438L..51S. 37520541 .
6. Book: Woodford, James. The Wollemi Pine: the incredible discovery of a living fossil from the age of the dinosaurs. rev.. Text Publishing Co. 2002. 978-1-876485-74-0.
7. 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.
8. Fukuda, Keiji . Straus, Stephen E. . Hickie, Ian . Sharpe, Michael C. . Dobbins, James G. . Komaroff, Anthony. International Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study Group . The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Comprehensive Approach to Its Definition and Study. Annals of Internal Medicine. 121. 12. 953–9. 15 December 1994. 7978722. 10.7326/0003-4819-121-12-199412150-00009. 510735 .
9. Flannery, T. F.. Tim Flannery. Boeadi. Szalay, A. L.. 1995. A new tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus: Marsupialia) from Irian Jaya, Indonesia, with notes on ethnography and the evolution of tree-kangaroos. Mammalia. 59. 1. 65–84. 10.1515/mamm.1995.59.1.65. 85107840 .
10. Web site: Five more Alzheimer's genes discovered, scientists say. James. Gallagher. 2011-04-04. BBC News. 2018-01-12.
11. Miki, Y.. Swensen, J.. Shattuck-Eidens, D.. Futreal, P. A.. Harshman, K.. Tavtigian, S.. Liu, Q.. Cochran, C.. Bennett, L. M.. Ding, W.. A strong candidate for the breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1. Science. 266. 5182. 66–71. October 1994. 7545954. 10.1126/science.7545954. 1994Sci...266...66M.
12. 10.1007/BF01291181. Production and decay of ²⁶⁹110. 1995. Zeitschrift für Physik A . 350. 277–280. Hofmann. S.. Ninov. V.. Heßberger. F. P.. Armbruster. P.. Folger. H.. Münzenberg. G.. Schött. H. J.. Popeko. A. G.. Yeremin. A. V.. A. N.. Andreyev. S. . Saro. R. . Janik. M. . Leino. 1995ZPhyA.350..277H. 4. 125020220 .
13. 10.1007/BF01291182 . The new element 111 . 1995 . Hofmann, S. . Zeitschrift für Physik A . 350 . 281–282 . Ninov . V. . Heßberger . F. P. . Armbruster . P. . Folger . H. . Münzenberg . G. . Schött . H. J. . Popeko . A. G. . Yeremin . A. V. . A. N. . Andreyev . S. . Saro . R. . Janik . M. . Leino . 1995ZPhyA.350..281H . 4 . 18804192 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140116120246/http://wwwsusi4.gsi.de/forschung/kp/kp2/ship/111publication.pdf . dead . 2014-01-16 .
14. Web site: Who is Jerry Yang?. NDTV. NDTV Convergence Limited. 2013-05-27. Agence France Presse. 2012-01-18.
15. Web site: Pizza Hut Tells Twitter It Made The First Online Sale In 1994. HuffPost. 2021-11-15. 2013-09-09. 2019-11-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20191105115930/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pizza-hut_n_3894981. live.
16. Web site: Hobbes' Internet Timeline 25. Zakon.org. 2018-08-14. 2020-11-11. https://web.archive.org/web/20201111235130/https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/index.html?ver=293#1990s. live.
17. News: America Online Buys 2 Internet Companies. 1994-11-10. Lewis, Peter. New York Times.
18. News: CNET. AOL exec details choosing IE. Hu, Jim. 2002-01-02.
19. Web site: Business Development/Japan (1994~2004). Sony. 2012-02-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20110703205240/http://scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdatajpn2004_e.html. 2011-07-03. dead.
20. Book: Walls, Colin. Embedded software. 2005. 344. Elsevier . 2012-01-28. 9780750679541.
21. Leonard M.. Adleman. Molecular Computation of Solutions To Combinatorial Problems. Science. 266. 5187. 1994-11-11. 1021–4. 10.1126/science.7973651. 7973651. 2885489. 1994Sci...266.1021A . 10.1.1.54.2565.
22. Web site: All Eight Roy Grace Novels by Peter James Now Available in e-Book Format in the United States: Author of "the world's first electronic novel" in 1994. https://web.archive.org/web/20130206103002/http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/1/prweb10380579.htm. dead. February 6, 2013. prweb. 2013-01-31. 2015-10-31.
23. Martinez-Maure. Yves. 10.2307/2975192. 4. American Mathematical Monthly. 1383672. 338–340. A note on the tennis ball theorem. 103. 1996. 2975192.
24. Web site: World's first 'smartphone' celebrates 20 years. BBC. 15 August 2014. 17 August 2014.
25. News: Overbye. Dennis. Dennis Overbye. Nobel Prize in Physics. 7 October 2014. The New York Times. 7 October 2014.