1996 in science explained

The year 1996 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 30 – Comet Hyakutake is discovered.^[1]
• February 17 – NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft launched. The craft landed on asteroid 433 Eros in 2001.^[2]
• May – First naked-eye observation of Comet Hale-Bopp.^[3]
• June 4 – The European Space Agency's Cluster is lost when the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 rocket fails, self-destructing 37 seconds after launch from the Guiana Space Centre because of a software bug in the computer control system.^[4]
• October 3 – Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez demonstrate the existence of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy, later identified as a black hole.^[5]
• November 7 – NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.^[6]
• The second 9.8 m reflecting telescope opens at Keck Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii.^[7]

Biology

• July 5 – Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, is born at The Roslin Institute in Scotland.^[8]
• August 6 – NASA announces that the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite thought to originate from Mars, may contain evidence of primitive life-forms;^[9] further tests are inconclusive.
• The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae's genome is sequenced, the first eukaryotic genome to be fully sequenced.^[10]

Chemistry

• February 9 – Copernicium first created at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany, by Sigurd Hofmann, Victor Ninov and others.^[11]

Computer science

• January
  • The Google web search engine originates as "BackRub", a research project using PageRank by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PhD students at Stanford University, California.^[12]
  • First USB specification issued.
• January 23 – The first version of the Java programming language is released.^[13]
• February 10 – Deep Blue defeats chess grand-master Garry Kasparov for the first time.^[14]
• April 3 – Jennifer Ringley becomes an early practitioner of lifecasting (video stream), from her dorm room at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.^[15]
• October – The Shetland Times and The Shetland News become involved in a landmark legal case over alleged copyright infringement and deep linking in their websites.^[16]
• The page ranking web search engine RankDex is originated by Robin Li.^{[17] [18] [19] [20]}
• Brewster Kahle, with Bruce Gilliat, develops the Wayback Machine software to crawl and archive World Wide Web pages.^[21]
• Lov Grover, at Bell Labs, publishes the quantum database search algorithm.^[22]
• IRCnet is founded.^[23]

Exploration

• May 23 – Swede Göran Kropp reaches Mount Everest summit alone without oxygen after having bicycled there from Sweden.^[24]

Medicine

• March
  • The Cochrane Library launched.^[25]
  • The role of CCR5 in HIV/AIDS infection begins to be published.^[26]
• July 7–12 – XI International AIDS Conference, 1996, Vancouver, reports major advances in the management of HIV/AIDS including combination therapy (the "triple cocktail") using protease inhibitors.^[27] Within a week after the conference, over 75,000 patients who have been using antibiotics and chemotherapy as treatment against opportunistic infections begin an effective antiviral regimen which greatly increases their immune system strength and therefore their health.^[28]
• New variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease first identified in humans, in the United Kingdom.^[29]
• Montreal Cognitive Assessment is created by Ziad Nasreddine in Montreal, Quebec.^[30]
• Donepezil (Aricept), a palliative treatment for moderate Alzheimer's disease, is approved in the United States.^{[31] [32] [33]}
• Sildenafil (Viagra), a treatment for erectile dysfunction, is patented by Pfizer.^[34]

Meteorology

• January 7 – A large blizzard hits the Eastern United States, killing 60.^[35]
• May 15 – Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh kills at least 443 people.^[36]
• July 18–21 – Storms provoke severe flooding on the Saguenay River in Quebec,^[37] in one of Canada's most costly natural disasters.^[38]

Philosophy

• Australian philosopher David Chalmers publishes The Conscious Mind: in search of a fundamental theory.^[39]

Technology

• Zenith introduces the first HDTV-compatible front projection television in the United States. Broadcasters, TV & PC manufacturers set industry standards for digital HDTV.^[40]
• APS film format is introduced.^[41]

Publications

• May – Sokal affair: American mathematical physicist Alan Sokal hoaxes the editors into publishing a deliberately nonsensical paper, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", in a "science wars" issue of the journal Social Text (Duke University Press)^[42] as a critique of the intellectual rigor of postmodernism in academic cultural studies.^[43]
• Belgian physical chemist Ilya Prigogine publishes La Fin des certitudes (translated as The End of Certainty: time, chaos, and the new laws of nature).^[44]
• French-born archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat publishes How Writing Came About.^[45]

Awards

• Nobel Prize^[46]
  • Physics: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff, Robert C. Richardson
  • Chemistry: Robert Curl, Sir Harold Kroto, Richard Smalley
  • Medicine: Peter C. Doherty, Rolf M. Zinkernagel
• Kyoto Prize
  • Willard Van Orman Quine is awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for his "outstanding contributions to the progress of philosophy in the 20th century by proposing numerous theories based on keen insights in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of language."^[47]
• Turing Award for Computing

Amir Pnueli^[48]

• Wollaston Medal for Geology

Nicholas John Shackleton^[49]

Births

• July 5 – Dolly (d. 2003), Scottish sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.^[50]

Deaths

• January 12 – Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (b. 1903), Dutch mathematician.^[51]
• February 20 – Solomon Asch (b. 1907), Polish American social psychologist.^[52]
• March 19 – Chen Jingrun (b. 1933), Chinese mathematician.^[53]
• March 26 – David Packard (b. 1912), American electrical engineer.^[54]
• June 6 – George Davis Snell (b. 1903), American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist.^[55]
• June 17 – Thomas Kuhn (b. 1922), American philosopher of science.^[56]
• August 1 – Tadeusz Reichstein (b. 1897), Polish-Swiss winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.^[57]
• August 9 – Sir Frank Whittle (b. 1907), English aeronautical engineer.^[58]
• August 12 – Victor Ambartsumian (b. 1908), Soviet Armenian theoretical astrophysicist.^[59]
• September 1 – Karl Kehrle (Brother Adam) (b. 1898), British Benedictine monk and beekeeper.^[60]
• September 10 – Hans List (b. 1896), Austrian inventor.^[61]
• September 20 – Paul Erdős (b. 1913), Hungarian-born mathematician.^[62]
• October 5 – Seymour Cray (b. 1925), American supercomputer architect.^[63]
• November 13 – Bobbie Vaile (b. 1959), Australian astrophysicist.^[64]
• November 19 – Grace Bates (b. 1914), American mathematician.^[65]
• November 21 – Abdus Salam (b. 1926), Punjabi-born winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.^[66]
• December 20 – Carl Sagan (b. 1934), American astronomer.^[67]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Comet Hyakutake in March 1996. epod.usra.edu. 20 February 2018.
2. Web site: Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Shoemaker. Encyclopedia Britannica. 2018-02-20. en.
3. Web site: Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake. www.pbs.org. 20 February 2018.
4. Web site: Gleick. James. A Bug and A Crash. New York Times Magazine. 2012-04-07. 1996-12-01. 2012-04-20. https://web.archive.org/web/20120420204657/http://www.around.com/ariane.html. dead.
5. Eckart. A.. Genzel. R.. 10.1038/383415a0. Observations of stellar proper motions near the Galactic Centre. Nature. 383. 6599. 415. 1996. 1996Natur.383..415E. 4285760. free.
6. Web site: Mars Global Surveyor. mars.nasa.gov. 20 February 2018.
7. Web site: Keck telescopes. Encyclopedia Britannica. 20 February 2018. en.
8. Web site: 1997: Dolly the sheep is cloned. BBC News. 20 February 2018. 22 February 1997.
9. Web site: CNN - Ancient meteorite may point to life on Mars - Aug. 7, 1996. edition.cnn.com. 20 February 2018.
10. 10.1534/g3.113.008995 . 24374639 . 3962479. The Reference Genome Sequence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Then and Now. G3. 4. 3 . 389–398 . 2014 . Engel . Stacia R. . Dietrich . Fred S. . Fisk . Dianna G.. Binkley . Gail . Balakrishnan . Rama . Costanzo . Maria C. . Dwight . Selina S. . Hitz . Benjamin C.. Karra . Kalpana . Nash . Robert S. . Weng . Shuai . Wong . Edith D.. Lloyd. Paul. Skrzypek. Marek S. . Miyasato . Stuart R. . Simison . Matt . Cherry . J. Michael.
11. 10.1007/BF02769517 . The new element 112 . Zeitschrift für Physik A . 354 . 3 . 229–230 . 1996 . Hofmann . S. . Ninov . V. . Heßberger . F. P. . Armbruster . P. . Folger . H. . Münzenberg . G. . Schött . H. J. . Popeko . A. G. . Yeremin . A. V. . Saro . S. . Janik . R. . Leino . M. . 1996ZPhyA.354..229H . 119975957 .
12. Web site: Our history in depth. Corporate Information. 2012-04-16.
13. Book: Davis. Daniel Paul. Hysterically Historical: January II. 2015. Booktango. 9781468964226. 71. en.
14. Book: Newborn. Monty. Beyond Deep Blue: Chess in the Stratosphere. 2011. Springer Science & Business Media. 9780857293411. 7–9. en.
15. Web site: Jennicam And The Birth Of 'Lifecasting'. Digg. 13 April 2015 . 20 February 2018. en.
16. Book: Smartt . Ursula . Media & entertainment law . 2014 . Taylor & Francis . Abingdon, Oxon . 9781317808169 . 425 . Second.
17. Greenberg. Andy. The Man Who's Beating Google. https://web.archive.org/web/20090922194042/http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1005/technology-baidu-robin-li-man-whos-beating-google_2.html. dead. September 22, 2009. Forbes. 2009-10-05.
18. 10.1109/4236.707687 . Toward a qualitative search engine . IEEE Internet Computing . 2 . 4 . 24–29 . 1998 . Yanhong Li . 14854613 .
19. Web site: About RankDex. IDD Information Services. 2014-06-04.
20. USPTO,"Hypertext Document Retrieval System and Method", US Patent number: 5920859, Inventor: Yanhong Li, Filing date: 5 February 1997, Issue date: 6 July 1999.
21. Kahle. Brewster. Archiving the Internet. Scientific American. 2011-08-19. March 1997. 2012-04-03. https://web.archive.org/web/20120403042627/http://www.uibk.ac.at/voeb/texte/kahle.html. dead.
22. Web site: The first quantum search algorithm on a scalable quantum computer has important implications. MIT Technology Review. 20 February 2018. en.
23. Book: Getting information from the IRC system: Linux Basic. AL1-032. NOITE S.C.. 5. pl.
24. Web site: Historical Badass: Goran Kropp, the Man Who Rode to Everest - adventure journal. www.adventure-journal.com. 20 February 2018. 21 February 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180221161458/https://www.adventure-journal.com/2016/06/historical-badass-goran-kropp-the-man-who-rode-to-everest/. dead.
25. 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.
26. Samson. M.. Labbe. O.. 1. Molecular cloning and functional expression of a new human CC-chemokine receptor gene. Biochemistry. 35. 11. 3362–7. March 1996. 8639485. 10.1021/bi952950g.
27. S. M.. Hammer. etal. A controlled trial of two nucleoside analogues plus indinavir in persons with human immunodeficiency virus infection. The New England Journal of Medicine. 337. 11. 725–33. September 1997. 9287227. 10.1056/NEJM199709113371101. 24043435 . free.
28. Book: Engel, Jonathan. The Epidemic. 2006. Smithsonian Books/Collins. New York. 978-0-06-114488-2. 246.
29. 10.1016/S0140-6736(96)91412-9 . 8598754 . A new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the UK . The Lancet . 347 . 9006 . 921–925 . 1996 . Will . R. G.. Ironside . J. W.. Zeidler . M. . Estibeiro . K. . Cousens . S. N.. Smith . P. G.. Alperovitch . A. . Poser . S. . Pocchiari . M. . Hofman . A. . 14230097 .
30. Nasreddine. Z. S.. etal. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA: a brief screening tool for mild cognitive impairment. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 53. 4. 695–9. 2005. 15817019. 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2005.53221.x. 9014589.
31. Book: 10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/03738-4 . Alzheimer's Disease: Antidementive Drugs . International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences . 418–423 . 2001 . Hofmann . M. . Hock . C. . 9780080430768 .
32. Book: 10.1016/B978-012351830-9/50034-2 . Cholinergic Treatments of Alzheimer's Disease . Functional Neurobiology of Aging . 475–486 . 2001 . Tsopelas . Nicholas D. . Marin . Deborah B. . 9780123518309 .
33. Book: 10.1016/B0-08-045044-X/00168-1 . Neurodegeneration . Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry II . 193–228 . 2007 . Bozyczko-Coyne . D. . Williams . M. . 9780080450445 .
34. 8858389 . Sildenafil: an orally active type 5 cyclic GMP-specific phosphodiesterase inhibitor for the treatment of penile erectile dysfunction . International Journal of Impotence Research . 8 . 2 . 47–52 . 1996 . Boolell . M. . Allen . M. J. . Ballard . S. A. . Gepi-Attee . S. . Muirhead . G. J. . Naylor . A. M. . Osterloh . I. H. . Gingell . C. .
35. News: Lipman. Don. One wild storm: A look back at the 'Blizzard of '96'. Washington Post. 20 February 2018. 7 January 2013.
36. Web site: Death Toll in Bangladesh Tornado Rises to at Least 443. The New York Times. 20 February 2018. 15 May 1996.
37. Web site: GEOSCAN Search Results: Fastlink. geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca. 20 February 2018. en. 2015-12-07.
38. Web site: 'What am I going to do?': Saguenay resident recalls flood that swept away his home. CBC News. 20 February 2018. en.
39. Web site: The Conscious Mind David J. Chalmers. www.oupcanada.com. 20 February 2018.
40. Book: Constable. George. Somerville. Bob. A Century of Innovation: Twenty Engineering Achievements that Transformed Our Lives. 2003. Joseph Henry Press. 9780309089081. 71. en.
41. Book: Andrews. Philip. Langford's Starting Photography: The Guide to Creating Great Images. 2015. CRC Press. 9781317552833. 46. en.
42. 10.2307/466856 . 466856 . Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity . Social Text . 46/47 . 217–252 . 1996 . Sokal . Alan D. . 1546862 .
43. A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies. 2015-03-09. Sokal. Alan D.. Lingua Franca. May 1996.
44. Book: Prigogine. Ilya. La Fin des certitudes. Amazon. Éditions Odile Jacob. 20 February 2018. French. 1 January 1996.
45. Book: How Writing Came About By Denise Schmandt-Besserat. University of Texas a Press. 20 February 2018. en. 9780292774865. 1996-06-05. Schmandt-Besserat. Denise. University of Texas Press. 2020-08-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20200831172303/https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/schhop. dead.
46. Web site: Nobel Prizes 1996. www.nobelprize.org. 20 February 2018.
47. Web site: Willard Van Orman Quine. Inamori Foundation. 15 December 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20130720223632/http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/laureates/k12_c_willard/ctn_e.html. 2013-07-20. dead.
48. Web site: Amir Pnueli. Encyclopedia Britannica. 20 February 2018. en.
49. Web site: The Geological Society of London - Wollaston Medal. www.geolsoc.org.uk. 21 February 2018.
50. Web site: Dolly the sheep. National Museums Scotland. 21 February 2018. en. 21 February 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180221101206/https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/natural-world/dolly-the-sheep/. dead.
51. Book: Sets and Extensions in the Twentieth Century. 2012. Elsevier. 9780080930664. 175. en.
52. Web site: About Solomon Asch. www.brynmawr.edu. 21 February 2018. 6 August 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190806035010/http://www.brynmawr.edu/aschcenter/about/solomon.htm. dead.
53. Book: Song, Yuwu. Biographical Dictionary of the People's Republic of China. 2014. McFarland. 978-1-4766-0298-1. 35.
54. Web site: Obituary: David Packard. https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220501/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-david-packard-1344506.html . 2022-05-01 . subscription . live. The Independent. 21 February 2018. 28 March 1996.
55. Web site: George Davis Snell - American geneticist. Encyclopedia Britannica. 21 February 2018. en.
56. Obituary: Thomas S. Kuhn (18 July 1922 - 17 June 1996). 285595. Social Studies of Science. 27. 3. 483–502. 1997. Edge. David. Harre. Rom. Brown. Andrew. Barnes. Barry. Mulkay. Michael. Fuller. Steve. Rudwick. Martin. Giere. Ronald N.. Bloor. David. 10.1177/030631297027003005. 11619257. 28154701 .
57. Web site: Tadeus Reichstein - Biographical. www.nobelprize.org. 21 February 2018.
58. Web site: Obituaries: Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle. https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220501/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaries-air-commodore-sir-frank-whittle-1309015.html . 2022-05-01 . subscription. The Independent. 21 February 2018. 10 August 1996.
59. Web site: Viktor Amazaspovich Ambartsumian - Armenian astronomer. Encyclopedia Britannica. 21 February 2018. en.
60. Web site: Brother Adam - British apiarist. Encyclopedia Britannica. 21 February 2018. en.
61. https://www.nae.edu/188075/HANS-LIST-18961996 HANS LIST 1896-1996
62. Web site: Paul Erdős - Hungarian mathematician. Encyclopedia Britannica. 21 February 2018. en.
63. Web site: Seymour R. Cray - American engineer. Encyclopedia Britannica. 21 February 2018. en.
64. Web site: U-W - Women in Astronomy: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Science Reference Services, Library of Congress). www.loc.gov. 21 February 2018.
65. Book: Beery. Janet L.. Janet Beery. Greenwald. Sarah J.. Jensen-Vallin. Jacqueline A.. Mast. Maura B.. Maura Mast. Women in Mathematics: Celebrating the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America. 2017. Springer. 9783319666945. 97. en.
66. 10.1098/rsbm.1998.0025 . Muhammad Abdus Salam, K. B. E.. 29 January 1926–21 November 1996 . Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . 44 . 387–401 . 1998 . Kibble . T. W. B. . free .
67. Web site: CNN - Carl Sagan dies at 62 - Dec. 20, 1996. edition.cnn.com. 21 February 2018.