1973 in science

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The year 1973 in science and technology involved one significant event, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• March 7 – Comet Kohoutek is discovered
• April 6 – Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft
• May 14 – Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.
• Solar eclipse of June 30, 1973 – Very long total solar eclipse visible in NE South America, the Atlantic, and central Africa. During the entire Second Millennium, only seven total solar eclipses exceed seven minutes of totality; this is the last. Observers aboard a Concorde jet are able to stretch totality to about 74 minutes by flying along the path of the moon's umbra.
• July 25 – Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.
• November 3 – Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury (on March 29, 1974 it became the first space probe to reach that planet).
• December 3 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
• December 7 – The "Big Ear" at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory begins a full-time search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) radio survey, running continuously until 1995.

Biology

• December 28 – Endangered Species Act signed into law in the United States.

Cartography

• Waldo R. Tobler introduces the Tobler hyperelliptical projection.

Chemistry

• A successful method of Vitamin B₁₂ total synthesis is reported by the groups of Robert Burns Woodward and Albert Eschenmoser.

Computer science

• November 21 – The sci-fi movie Westworld is the first feature film to use digital image processing.

Cryptography

• October – Asymmetric key algorithms for public-key cryptography developed by James H. Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm J. Williamson at the United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters.

Earth sciences

• Derek Ager publishes The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record.

History of science

• May 5 – July 28 – BBC Television series The Ascent of Man, written and presented by Jacob Bronowski, first airs; there is also an accompanying bestselling book.

Mathematics

• Fischer Black and Myron Scholes first articulate the Black–Scholes mathematical model of a financial market containing certain derivative investment instruments.

Physiology and medicine

• The term "dendritic cell" is coined by Ralph M. Steinman working with Zanvil A. Cohn.

Psychology

• David Rosenhan publishes the results of his experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis.
• The American Psychiatric Association officially declares that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

Technology

• April 3 – The first handheld mobile phone call is made by Martin Cooper of Motorola in New York City.
• Ichiro Kato, Waseda University, develops the world's first full-scale humanoid robot, Wabot-1.

Institutions

• March 6 – The Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded as the Montenegrin Society for Science and Arts (Crnogorsko društvo za nauku i umjetnost), elects its first members.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Leo Esaki, Ivar Giaever, Brian David Josephson
  • Chemistry – Ernst Otto Fischer, Geoffrey Wilkinson
  • Medicine – Karl Von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen
• Turing Award – Charles W. Bachman

Births

• October 5 – Cédric Villani, French mathematician
• November 19 – Nim Chimpsky (d. 2000), chimpanzee
• December 5 – Luboš Motl, Czech theoretical physicist

Deaths

• February 11 – J. Hans D. Jensen (b. 1907), German nuclear physicist
• March 12 – David Lack (b. 1910), English ornithologist
• March 14 – Howard H. Aiken (b. 1900), American computing pioneer
• July 3 – Laurens Hammond (b. 1895), American inventor
• December 10 – Wolf V. Vishniac (b. 1922), American microbiologist
• December 17 – Charles Greeley Abbot (b. 1872), American astrophysicist