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1981 in science

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1981 in science

The year 1981 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Contents

Biology

  • September – Pantanal Matogrossense National Park designated in Brazil.
  • Publication of Stephen Jay Gould's critique of biological determinism, The Mismeasure of Man, in the United States.

    • Computer science

  • March 5 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research, going on to sell over 1.5 million units worldwide.
  • April 3 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
  • July 9 – Nintendo releases the arcade game Donkey Kong featuring the debut of Mario.
  • August 12 – The IBM Personal Computer is released.
  • September 12 – The Chaos Computer Club, a European association of hackers, is established in Berlin by Wau Holland and others.

    • Medicine

  • April 26 - Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco, performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.
  • June 5 - AIDS pandemic begins when the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports an unusual cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.
  • Dr. Bruce Reitz performs the first successful heart–lung transplant on Mary Gohlke at Stanford Hospital.

    • Space exploration

  • April 12 – The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.

    • Technology

  • July 7 – Electric aircraft Solar Challenger, designed by an American team led by Paul MacCready and piloted by Stephen Ptacek, makes a 163-mile (262 km) crossing of the English Channel using only solar power from wing-mounted photovoltaic cells.
  • July 17 – Hyatt Regency walkway collapse: Structural failure due to a late design change causes two internal suspended walkways at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri to collapse, killing 114.

    • Awards

  • Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Nicolaas Bloembergen, Arthur Leonard Schawlow, Kai M. Siegbahn
  • Chemistry – Kenichi Fukui, Roald Hoffmann
  • Medicine – Roger W. Sperry, David H. Hubel, Torsten N. Wiesel
  • Turing Award – Edgar F. Codd

    • Deaths

  • January 5
  • Frederick Osborn (b. 1889), American philanthropist and eugenicist.
  • Harold Urey (b. 1893), American winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
  • March 9 – Max Delbrück (b. 1906), German biologist.
  • April 3 – Leo Kanner (b. 1894), Austrian American clinical child psychiatrist.
  • July 4 - Niels Erik Nørlund (b. 1885), Danish mathematician.
  • July 27 – Elizabeth Rona (b. 1890), Hungarian American nuclear chemist.
  • July 31 – Ernest Melville DuPorte (b. 1891), Black Canadian insect morphologist.
  • November 17 – Sibyl M. Rock (b. 1909), American mathematician.
  • November 22 – Hans Krebs (b. 1900), German medical doctor and biochemist; discoverer of the citric acid cycle.
  • December 6 – Harry Harlow (b. 1905), American psychologist.

    • References

    1981 in science Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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