1959 in science
The year 1959 CE in science and technology included many events, some of which are included below.See also: 1958 in science, other events in 1959, 1960 in science, and the list of years in science.
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2 Computer science 3 Physics 4 Technology 5 Awards 6 Births 7 Deaths |
Astronomy and space exploration
- August 7 - The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- September 15 - Russian probe Luna 2 sends back first photos of the far side of Earth's Moon.
- September 19 - Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison publish in Nature their seminal paper Searching for Interstellar Communications, establishing the scientific rationale for SETI.
- Physicist Freeman Dyson first proposes the hypothetical Dyson sphere.
- Little Joe 2, a mission in the Mercury program, carried Sam the monkey into space.
Computer science
- IBM shipped the transistor-based IBM 1401 mainframe.
Physics
- The neutrino is first experimentally detected, by Clyde Cowan and Fred Reines.
- Yakir Aharonov and David Bohm predict the Aharonov-Bohm effect.
Technology
- Agfa introduces the first fully automatic camera, the Optima.
- Pilkington Brothers patent the float glass process.
Awards
- Nobel Prizes
- Physics - Emilio Gino Segrč, - Owen Chamberlain
- Chemistry - Jaroslav Heyrovsky
- Medicine - Severo Ochoa, Arthur Kornberg