2000 in science

The year 2000 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy and space exploration

Conjunction of planets, moon and sun on May 4, 2000

• May 4 – A rare conjunction occurs on the New Moon including all seven of the traditional celestial bodies known from ancient times up until 1781 with the discovery of Uranus. The May 2000 conjunction consisted of: the Sun and Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
• August 10 – Publication of the M-sigma relation in The Astrophysical Journal.

Biology

• June 26 – 'Rough draft' of the human genome is announced jointly by President of the United States Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.^[1]
• December 14 – The full genome sequence of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana is published in Nature.
• 10-year Census of Marine Life launched.^[2]

Medicine

• January 31 – English doctor Harold Shipman is found guilty of killing fifteen of his elderly patients by lethal injections of diamorphine, the only British physician ever convicted of murdering his patients; he is actually considered to have killed at least 215.^[3]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Zhores Alferov, Herbert Kroemer, Jack Kilby
  • Chemistry – Alan J Heeger, Alan G MacDiarmid, Hideki Shirakawa
  • Medicine – Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, Eric R. Kandel
• Turing Award: Andrew Yao
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Sefton Fyfe

Births

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Deaths

• March 10 – Nim Chimpsky (b. 1973), chimpanzee
• May 19 – Yevgeny Khrunov (b. 1933), cosmonaut
• June 14 – Elsie Widdowson (b. 1908), nutritionist
• September 20 – Gherman Titov (b. 1935), cosmonaut
• October 4 – Michael Smith (b. 1932), chemist, 1993 Nobel Prize winner
• November 20 – Nikolay Dollezhal (b. 1899), a key figure in Soviet atomic bomb project and chief designer of nuclear reactors

References