1958 in science

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The year 1958 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Events

• During International Geophysical Year
  • Earth's magnetosphere is discovered.
  • The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition discovers the subglacial Gamburtsev Mountain Range in Antarctica; also becoming the first to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility (December 14).
  • The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes (March 2) its three-year mission to make the first overland crossing of Antarctica, via the South Pole. The first (and third ever) team to reach the Pole overland (January 3) is Edmund Hillary's, using adapted Ferguson TE20 tractors, the first powered vehicles to complete a trip here.
• April 17–October 19 – Expo 58 in Brussels. The centrepiece is the Atomium; and a model of tobacco mosaic virus structure by Rosalind Franklin's research team is exhibited.
• July 9 – 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami: A 7.8 Mw strike-slip earthquake in Southeast Alaska causes a landslide that produces a megatsunami. The runup from the waves reached 525 m (1,722 ft) on the rim of Lituya Bay.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 4 – Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from its orbit and burns up (launched on October 4, 1957).
• January 31 – The first successful American satellite, Explorer I, is launched into orbit.
• February 5 – A backup for Vanguard TV3 fails to reach orbit.
• February 11 – The strongest ever known solar maximum is recorded.
• March 5 – Explorer 2 fails to reach orbit.
• March 17 – Vanguard 1 becomes the first of its program to enter space, after three failed attempts.
• March 26 – Explorer 3 is launched into orbit.
• April 14 – Sputnik 2 re-enters Earth's atmosphere.
• July 29 – The United States Congress formally creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
• September 14 – Two rockets designed by Ernst Mohr (the first post-war German rockets) reach the upper atmosphere.
• December 18 – The United States launches SCORE, the world's first communications satellite.

Biology

• John Gurdon clones a frog using somatic-cell nuclear transfer from a Xenopus tadpole.
• Anne McLaren, with John D. Biggers, reports the first mammals, a litter of mice, grown from embryos developed in vitro and transferred to a surrogate mother.

Chemistry

• Denatonium, the bitterest chemical compound known (used as an aversive agent), is discovered during research on local anesthetics by Macfarlan Smith of Edinburgh, Scotland, and registered under the trademark Bitrex.

Computer science

• May 27–June 2 – A joint meeting of the ACM and GAMM at ETH Zurich agrees to produce the International Algebraic Language, which will become the programming language ALGOL.
• Friedrich L. Bauer and other members of the ZMMD-Group build a working ALGOL 58 compiler.
• John McCarthy specifies the Lisp programming language.

History of science

• Society for the History of Technology established.

Mathematics

• School Mathematics Study Group, directed by Edward G. Begle, established to develop a new school mathematics curriculum for the United States; it is influential in the promotion of New Math.

Medicine

• May 22 – Jérôme Lejeune, working with Marthe Gautier in Raymond Turpin's French laboratory, discovers that the genetic cause of Down syndrome is an extra copy of chromosome 21.
• June 7 – Ian Donald publishes an article in The Lancet which describes the diagnostic use of ultrasound.
• Engineer Earl Bakken (U.S.) produces the first wearable external artificial pacemaker, for a patient of Dr. C. Walton Lillehei.
• The first clinical implantations into a human of fully implantable artificial pacemakers takes place at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden, using a pacemaker designed by Rune Elmqvist and surgeon Åke Senning. The patient, Arne Larsson (1915–2001), survives until age 86, having been fitted with 22 pacemakers throughout his life.
• B. Eiseman and colleagues from Colorado first describe fecal microbiota transplantation.
• Denis Parsons Burkitt first describes Burkitt's lymphoma.

Technology

• April 1 – The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is established.
• September 12 – Jack Kilby demonstrates the first integrated circuit.
• December 15 – Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes of Bell Laboratories publish a paper in Physical Review Letters setting out the principles of the optical laser.
• Dutch rally driver Maus Gatsonides introduces his first roadside automobile speed measurement device.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Klaus Roth and René Thom
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm
  • Chemistry – Frederick Sanger
  • Medicine – George Wells Beadle, Edward Lawrie Tatum, Joshua Lederberg

Births

• February 26 – Susan J. Helms, American astronaut
• July 15 – Monica Grady, British meteorite scientist
• Anthony Atala, Peruvian-born American regenerative medicine practitioner

Deaths

• February 11 – Ernest Jones (born 1879), Welsh psychoanalyst
• April 16 – Rosalind Franklin (born 1920), English crystallographer
• August 14 – Frédéric Joliot-Curie (born 1900), French physicist (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1935)
• August 27 – Ernest Lawrence (born 1901), American physicist (Nobel Prize in Physics 1932)
• October 2 – Marie Stopes (born 1880), Scottish-born paleobotanist and pioneer of birth control
• November 17 – Yutaka Taniyama (born 1927), Japanese mathematician (suicide)
• December 12 – Milutin Milanković (born 1879), Serbian geophysicist
• December 15 – Wolfgang Pauli (born 1900), Austrian theoretical physicist