1986 in science

The year 1986 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 24 – Voyager 2 space probe makes first encounter with Uranus.
• January 28 – Space Shuttle Challenger explodes on launch, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
• February 19 – The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station.
• March 8 – Japanese spacecraft Suisei flies by Halley's Comet, studying its UV hydrogen corona and solar wind.

Biology

• May – First reported methods for constructing a monoclonal antibody containing parts from mouse and human antibodies, a required first step toward the development of humanized antibodies used later as medical therapeutics (such as Infliximab).^[1][2]

Computer science

• January 19 – The first MS-DOS-based personal computer virus, Brain, starts to spread.^[3]
• April 3 – IBM unveils the PC Convertible, the first laptop computer.
• Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is visualized by Mark Crispin.

Mathematics

• Lee Sallows introduces the alphamagic square.^[4]

Medicine

• Food and Drug Administration approval of the first monoclonal antibody drug, Muronomab-CD3 (also known as Orthoclone OKT3), for treatment of transplant rejection.^{[citation needed]}

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Simon Donaldson, Gerd Faltings and Michael Freedman
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer
  • Chemistry – Dudley R. Herschbach, Yuan T. Lee, John C. Polanyi
  • Medicine – Stanley Cohen, Rita Levi-Montalcini
• Turing Award – John Hopcroft, Robert Tarjan
• Wollaston Medal for Geology – Claude Jean Allègre

Births

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Deaths

• January 7 – Rex Wailes (b. 1901), English engineer and historian of technology.
• January 28 – Crew of United States Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-L:
  • Dick Scobee (b. 1939)
  • Michael J. Smith (b. 1945)
  • Judith Resnik (b. 1949)
  • Ellison Onizuka (b. 1946)
  • Ronald McNair (b. 1950)
  • Greg Jarvis (b. 1944)
  • Christa McAuliffe (b. 1948)
• July 21 – Zhang Yuzhe (b. 1902), Chinese astronomer.
• October 22 – Albert Szent-Györgyi (b. 1893), Hungarian physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• October 23 – Edward Adelbert Doisy (b. 1893), American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

References