1998 in science

The year 1998 in science and technology involved many events, some of which are included below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January–September – Cosmologists from the Supernova Cosmology Project led by Saul Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team led by Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt publish evidence that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.^[1][2][3]
• January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon and later finds evidence for frozen water on the moon's surface.
• February 26 – Total solar eclipse
• March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo spaceprobe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
• March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket-fuelling station.
• March 13 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• July 5 – Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space-exploring nation.
• August 8 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• August 22 – Annular solar eclipse
• September 6 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• October 29 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts-off with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. He became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
• November 20 – Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station, is launched.
• The first of four 8.4 m reflecting telescopes opens in the Very Large Telescope program of the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal in Chile.

Computer science

• February 10 – XML is published as a recommendation of the W3C.
• June 2 – The CIH virus is discovered in Taiwan.
• The first working 2-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance computer is demonstrated at the University of California, Berkeley.

Geology

• February 4 – An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale in northeast Afghanistan kills more than 5,000.
• March 14 – An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran.
• May 30 – A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits northern Afghanistan killing up to 5,000.
• July 17 – A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 1,500, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.

Mathematics

• Luca Cardelli and Andrew D. Gordon develop ambient calculus.
• Thomas Callister Hales (almost certainly) proves the Kepler conjecture.

Physics

• May 11 & 13 – Nuclear testing: The Pokhran-II: India detonates the five nuclear devices in Pokhran Test Range, an Indian Army base.
• May 28 – Nuclear testing: The Chagai-I: In response to India, Pakistan conducts five underground and simultaneous nuclear weapon-testing experiments in the Chagai Hills, thus becoming the first nuclear weapon state in the Muslim world and the seventh in the world.
• May 30 – Nuclear testing: The Chagai-II: As part of a tit-for-tat policy, a final plutonium implosion test is carried out in the Kharan Desert.

Physiology and medicine

• January 14 – Researchers in Dallas, Texas, present findings about an enzyme that slows aging and cell death (apoptosis).
• February 19 – RNA interference first elucidated in C. elegans.
• February 28 – Andrew Wakefield publishes a case series (subsequently partially retracted) in The Lancet of twelve children with gastroenterological and autistic spectrum disorders believed to have first presented soon after receipt of the MMR vaccine.^[4][5]
• July 17 – Biologists report in the journal Science how they sequenced the genome of the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum.
• December 11 – Bruce Beutler and colleagues publish their discovery that Toll-like receptor 4 functions as a lipopolysaccharide sensing receptor.^[6]

Technology

• April 5 – In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshū, at a cost of about US$3.8 billion, opens to traffic, becoming the longest-span suspension bridge in the world.

Publications

• Jacques Heyman – Structural Analysis: A Historical Approach (Cambridge University Press)^[7]

Appointments

• Susan Greenfield appointed Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.^[8]

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Richard Ewen Borcherds, William Timothy Gowers, Maxim Kontsevich and Curtis T. McMullen
• Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer, Daniel C. Tsui
  • Chemistry – Walter Kohn, John Pople
  • Medicine – Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro, Ferid Murad
• Turing Award: Jim Gray
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Karl Karekin Turekian

Births

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Deaths

• March 15 – Benjamin Spock (b. 1903), pediatrician, writer.
• May 31 – Michio Suzuki (b. 1926), mathematician.
• July 3 – Danielle Bunten Berry (b. 1949), also known as Dan Bunten, software developer.
• July 21 – Alan Shepard (b. 1923), astronaut.
• August 4 – Yuri Artyukhin (b. 1930), cosmonaut.
• August 26 – Frederick Reines (b. 1918), physicist, Nobel laureate.
• December 17 – Claudia Benton (b. c.1959), pediatric neurologist.
• December 18 – Lev Demin (b. 1926), cosmonaut.
• December 20 – Sir Alan Hodgkin (b. 1914), physiologist, Nobel laureate.

References

	1990s portal
	Science portal