1950 in science

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The year 1950 in science and technology included some significant events.

Astronomy and space sciences

• Dutch astronomer Jan Oort postulates the existence of an orbiting cloud of planets (the Oort cloud) at the outermost edge of the Solar System.^[1]

Biology

• Melvin Calvin, James Bassham, and Andrew Benson at the University of California, Berkeley, discover the Calvin cycle in photosynthesis.^[2]
• Entomologist Willi Hennig publishes Grundzüge einer Theorie der phylogenetischen Systematik in East Germany, pioneering the study of cladistics.
• Full-scale release of myxomatosis for control of the Australian rabbit population.

Chemistry

• February 9 – Californium, a radioactive actinide transuranium element, is first synthesized by Stanley G. Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley.^[3][4][5]

Computer science

• March – Publication of Claude Shannon's paper "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess", seminal in the development of computer chess and introducing the Shannon number.^[6]
• April – Publication of Richard Hamming's paper "Error detecting and error correcting codes", seminal in the construction of error detection and correction codes^[7][8]and from which Hamming code and the Hamming distance derive.
• October – Publication of Alan Turing's paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", seminal in the study of artificial intelligence and presenting the Turing test.^[9][10]

Mathematics

• John Forbes Nash, Jr. proposes the Nash equilibrium in game theory, initially in his Princeton doctoral thesis.^[11][12][13]
• The prisoner's dilemma is framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher at RAND and formalized and named by Albert W. Tucker.^[14]

Medicine

• June 17 – The first cadaveric internal kidney transplantation is performed on Ruth Tucker, a 44-year-old woman with polycystic kidney disease, at Little Company of Mary Hospital (Evergreen Park), Illinois. Although the donated kidney is rejected 10 months later because no effective immunosuppressive drugs have been developed at this time, the intervening time gives Tucker's remaining kidney time to recover and she lived another 5 years.^[15]
• October – Australian-born British thoracic surgeon Norman Barrett describes the condition which will become known as Barrett's oesophagus.^[16]
• December 11 – The typical antipsychotic Chlorpromazine is first synthesized.
• Antihistamine discovered.
• An external artificial pacemaker is developed by John A. Hopps in conjunction with Wilfred Gordon Bigelow at Toronto General Hospital.

Physics

• John Ward derives the Ward–Takahashi identity in quantum field theory.^[17]

Technology

• October 11 – A field-sequential color system developed by Hungarian American engineer Dr. Peter Goldmark becomes the first color television system to be adopted for commercial use (by CBS in the United States), but is abandoned a year later.^[18][19]
• Canadians Harry Wasylyk, Larry Hansen and Frank Plomp introduce the plastic bin bag for garbage collection.^[20]
• First practical pager, developed and manufactured by the Reevesound Company, is introduced for physicians in the New York City area.^[21]

Events

• J. Z. Young delivers the BBC Reith Lectures on Doubt and Certainty in Science, introducing the radio audience to current developments in neurophysiology.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics (first postwar award): Laurent Schwartz and Atle Selberg
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Cecil Frank Powell
  • Chemistry – Otto Paul Hermann Diels, Kurt Alder
  • Medicine – Edward Calvin Kendall, Tadeus Reichstein, Philip Showalter Hench

Births

• March 2 – James W. Pennebaker, American social psychologist.
• March 5 – Henry Marsh, English neurosurgeon.
• March 18 – Linda Partridge, English biogerontologist.
• May 16 – Georg Bednorz, German physicist, Nobel Prize in physics 1987.
• October 21 – Ronald McNair (died on mission 1986), African American physicist and astronaut.
• November 1 – Robert B. Laughlin, American physicist, Nobel prize in physics 1998.
• November 3 – James Rothman, American cell biologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013.
• November 22 – Eva-Maria Neher, née Ruhr, German biochemist.
• December 13 – Julia Slingo, English meteorologist.

Deaths

• February 25 – George Minot (born 1885), American physician, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1934
• April 1 – Charles R. Drew (born 1904), African American physician, pioneer in blood transfusion
• April 28 – Oakes Ames (born 1874), American botanist
• September 21 – Arthur Milne (born 1896), British space physicist
• December 11 – Leslie Comrie (born 1893), New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer

References

1. Oort, Jan (1950). "The structure of the cloud of comets surrounding the Solar System and a hypothesis concerning its origin". Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands. 11: 91–110. Bibcode:1950BAN....11...91O.
2. Bassham, J.; Benson, A.; Calvin, M. (1950). "The path of carbon in photosynthesis" (PDF). Journal of Biological Chemistry. 185 (2): 781–7. doi:10.2172/910351. PMID 14774424.
3. Thompson, S. G.; Street, Jr. K.; Ghiorso, A.; Seaborg, G. T. (1950). "Element 98". Physical Review. 78 (3): 298. Bibcode:1950PhRv...78..298T. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.78.298.2.
4. Thompson, S. G.; Street, Jr. K.; Ghiorso, A.; Seaborg, G. T. (1950). "The New Element Californium (Atomic Number 98)" (PDF). Physical Review. 80 (5): 790. Bibcode:1950PhRv...80..790T. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.80.790.
5. Street, K. Jr.; Thompson, S. G.; Seaborg, G. T. (1950). "Chemical Properties of Californium" (PDF). Journal of the American Chemical Society. 72 (10): 4832. doi:10.1021/ja01166a528.
6. Shannon, Claude E. (March 1950). "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess" (PDF). Philosophical Magazine. 41 (314): 256–75. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
7. Hamming, R. W. (April 1950). "Error detecting and error correcting codes" (PDF). Bell System Technical Journal. 29 (2): 147–160. doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1950.tb00463.x. Retrieved 2012-05-12.
8. O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. (January 2012). "Richard Wesley Hamming". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. University of St Andrews. Retrieved 2012-05-12.
9. Turing, A. M. (October 1950). "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Mind. 59 (236): 433–60. doi:10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433. Retrieved 2011-11-28.
10. Epstein, Robert; Roberts, Gary; Beber, Grace, eds. (2009). Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. New York: Kluwer. ISBN 978-1-4020-6708-2.
11. Osborne, M. J. (2004), An Introduction to Game Theory, Oxford University Press, p. 23
12. Nash, J. F. (1950). "Equilibrium Points in N-person Games". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 36 (1): 48–9. Bibcode:1950PNAS...36...48N. doi:10.1073/pnas.36.1.48. MR 0031701. PMC 1063129. PMID 16588946..
13. Nash, J. F. (1950). "The Bargaining Problem". Econometrica (18): 155–62. MR 0035977..
14. Poundstone, William (1992). Prisoner's Dilemma. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385415672.
15. Petechuk, David (2006). Organ transplantation. Greenwood. p. 11. ISBN 0-313-33542-7.
16. Barrett, N. R. (October 1950). "Chronic Peptic Ulcer of the Œsophagus and 'Œsophagitis'" (PDF). British Journal of Surgery. 38 (150): 175–82. doi:10.1002/bjs.18003815005. PMID 14791960. Retrieved 2012-02-08.
17. Ward, J. C. (1950). "An identity in quantum electrodynamics". Physical Review. 78: 182. Bibcode:1950PhRv...78..182W. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.78.182.
18. "C.B.S. Color Video Starts Nov. 20; Adapters Needed by Present Sets". New York Times. 1950-10-12. p. 1.
19. Slotten, Hugh Richard (2000). Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States 1920–1960. JHU Press. ISBN 0-8018-6450-X.
20. "The Greatest Canadian Invention". CBC Television. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010.
21. "Pocket Radio Pages Doctors Night Or Day". Popular Science. January 1951.