2001 in science

The year 2001 in science and technology involved many events, some of which are included below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lands in the "saddle" region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
• The Genesis spacecraft is launched.
• NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles (180 km) of Jupiter's moon Io.
• June 21 – Total solar eclipse
• December 14 – Annular solar eclipse

Biology

• January 8 – The first animal from an endangered species produced by cloning, a gaur named Noah, is born at Trans Ova Genetics in Sioux Center, Iowa. He dies within 48 hours of a common dysentery.^[1][2]
• January – The second animal from an endangered species produced by cloning, a European mouflon lamb, is born in Italy.^[3]
• February – The publicly funded Human Genome Project, led by Francis Collins and the privately funded Celera effort, led by Craig Venter simultaneously publish their decoding of the human genome (in Nature and Science, respectively).
• Craig Venter and Mark Adams complete the genetic map of the laboratory mouse.
• Fossil remains of the whale Rodhocetus balochistanensis found in Balochistan Province, Pakistan, by Philip D. Gingerich.^[4]

Computer science

• January 15 – Wikipedia launches on the internet.
• October 23 – Apple Computer unveil the first generation iPod portable media player.
• December – The C# programming language specification is released.
• In quantum computing, the first working 7-qubit NMR computer is demonstrated at IBM's Almaden Research Center, demonstrating Shor's algorithm.
• The Walkman Circ is released.

Medicine

• July 2 – The world's first self-contained artificial heart is implanted in Robert Tools.
• Adult-onset basal ganglia disease caused by FTL mutations is described.

Paleontology

• First fossil skull fragments of the hominid 'Toumaï' (Sahelanthropus tchadensis; 7 million years BP) found by a team led by Michel Brunet in Chad.^[5][6]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Eric Allin Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle, Carl E. Wieman
  • Chemistry – William S. Knowles, Ryōji Noyori, K. Barry Sharpless
  • Medicine – Leland H. Hartwell, R. Timothy Hunt, Paul M. Nurse
• Turing Award: Ole-Johan Dahl, Kristen Nygaard
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Harry Blackmore Whittington

Births

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Deaths

• February 24 – Claude Shannon (b. 1916), American mathematician.
• May 28 – Francisco Varela (b. 1946), Chilean biologist and philosopher.
• June 18 – René Dumont (b. 1904), French agronomist.
• August 9 – Sir Alec Skempton (b. 1914), English pioneer of soil science and engineering historian.
• August 20 – Fred Hoyle (b. 1915), English astronomer and science fiction writer.
• September 2 – Christiaan Barnard (b. 1922), South African cardiac surgeon.
• November 30 – Robert Tools (b. 1942), American first recipient of a self-contained artificial heart, after 151 days without a living heart.
• December 5 – Franco Rasetti (b. 1901), Italian American physicist.
• December 12 – Robert Schommer (b. 1946), American astronomer.

References