1987 in science

The year 1987 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.

Astronomy

• February 23 – Supernova 1987a is observed, the first "naked-eye" supernova since 1604.
• Asteroid 7816 Hanoi is discovered by Masahiro Koishikawa.
• 10500 Nishi-koen is discovered.

Genetics

• November 6 – Florida rapist Tommy Lee Andrews is the first person to be convicted as a result of DNA fingerprinting.^[1]

Mathematics

• Gödel's ontological proof of the existence of God is published posthumously.^[2]

Physics

• March 18 – Woodstock of physics, the marathon session of the American Physical Society’s meeting featuring 51 presentations concerning the science of high-temperature superconductors.

Medicine

• March 20 – The United States Food and Drug Administration approves anti-AIDS drug AZT.^[3]
• May – The name chronic fatigue syndrome first appears in the medical literature.^[4]
• May 11 – The first heart-lung transplant takes place.
• August 31 – The FDA for the first time approves a statin, lovastatin.^[5][6]
• December 29 – Prozac makes its debut in the U.S.

Paleoanthropology

• January 1 – The 'Mitochondrial Eve' hypothesis is proposed.^[7]

Technology

• December 1 – Channel Tunnel digging commences

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – J. Georg Bednorz, Karl Alexander Müller
  • Chemistry – Donald J. Cram, Jean-Marie Lehn, Charles J. Pedersen
  • Medicine – Susumu Tonegawa
• Turing Award – John Cocke
• Wollaston Medal for Geology – Claude Jean Allègre

Births

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Deaths

• March 19 – Louis de Broglie (b. 1892), French physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1929).
• March 26 - Gwyn Macfarlane (b. 1907), British hematologist.
• October 13 – Walter Houser Brattain (b. 1902), American physicist.
• October 20 – Andrey Kolmogorov (b. 1903), Russian mathematician.
• December 2 – Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich (b. 1914), Belarusian astrophysicist.

References