1967 in science

The year 1967 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Anthropology

• October 12 - Desmond Morris publishes The Naked Ape.^[1]

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 27 - Apollo 1 destroyed in a fire on the launch pad.
• January 27 - The USA, Soviet Union and UK sign the Outer Space Treaty.
• April 20 - Surveyor 3 probe lands on the Moon.
• April 24 - Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed during the landing of Soyuz 1.
• October 19 - Mariner 5 probe flies by Venus.
• November 9 - Apollo program: NASA launches a Saturn V rocket carrying the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft from Cape Kennedy.
• November - Pulsars discovered by Jocelyn Bell working with Antony Hewish at the University of Cambridge,^[2] for which Hewish is awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974. These rapidly pulsating radio sources are explained a year later as rotating neutron stars.
• NRAO builds the 36-foot Radio Telescope, later to become the ARO 12m Radio Telescope.

Biology

• Chimpanzee Washoe begins to learn American Sign Language.

Cartography

• Arno Peters reinvents the Gall orthographic equal-area projection.

Mathematics

• Errett Bishop publishes Foundations of Constructive Analysis, proving theorems in real analysis using constructive analysis.^[3]
• Michael Goldberg demonstrates that none of the original Malfatti circles are ever optimal.^[4]

Medicine

• Thomas Starzl performs the first successful human liver transplant, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
• First use, in a case of myocardial infarction, of the intra-aortic balloon pump invented by Dr Adrian Kantrowitz and his brother Arthur.^[5]
• December 3 - Dr Christiaan Barnard and a team including his brother Marius perform the first successful human heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, on Louis Washkansky, who survives for eighteen days.
• December 6 - Dr Adrian Kantrowitz performs the first pediatric heart transplant, at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, United States, on a 19-day-old infant, who survives for six hours.^[6][7]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - Hans Bethe
  • Chemistry - Manfred Eigen, Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, George Porter
  • Medicine - Ragnar Granit, Haldan Keffer Hartline, George Wald
• Turing Award - Maurice Vincent Wilkes

Births

• February 24 - Brian Schmidt, Australian winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (2011).

Deaths

• January 16 - Robert J. Van de Graaff (born 1901), American physicist.
• January 19 - Casimir Funk (born 1884), Polish biochemist, coined the term vitamin.
• January 27 - Apollo 1 crew
  • Edward White (born 1930)
  • Gus Grissom (born 1926)
  • Roger Chaffee (born 1935)
• February 18 - J. Robert Oppenheimer (born 1904), American physicist.
• March 27 - Jaroslav Heyrovský (born 1890), Czech chemist.
• April 5 - Hermann Joseph Muller (born 1890), American geneticist.
• April 24 - Vladimir Komarov (born 1927), cosmonaut on Soyuz 1.
• May 5 - Owen Thomas Jones (born 1878), Welsh geologist

References