1954 in science

The year 1954 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite crashes through a roof and hits Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio, giving her a bad bruise; the first known modern case of a human being hit by a space rock.

Biology

• January 10 – Last confirmed specimen of a Caspian tiger is killed, in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet Dag Mountains of Turkmenistan.^[1]
• Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.^[2][3]
• Heinz Sielmann makes the pioneering nature documentary about woodpeckers, Zimmerleute des Waldes ("Carpenters of the forest").
• Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck propose the species name bonobo for what was previously known as the pygmy chimpanzee.^[4]

Chemistry

• Publication of the first analysis of the three-dimensional molecular structure of vitamin B₁₂ by a group including Dorothy Hodgkin, and utilising computer analysis provided by Kenneth Nyitray Trueblood.^[5][6]
• Strychnine total synthesis is first achieved in the laboratory by Robert Burns Woodward's team at Harvard.^{[7][8][9][10]}
• The Wittig reaction is discovered by German chemist Georg Wittig.

Computer science

• January – The TRADIC Phase One computer is completed at Bell Labs in the United States, a candidate to be regarded as the first transistor computer.^[11]
• January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.

Geology

• December 31 – The first specimens of the mineral benstonite are collected by Orlando J. Benston in the Magnet Cove igneous complex of Arkansas.^[12]

History of science

• Joseph Needham begins publication of Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge University Press).
• A History of Technology, edited by Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard and A. R. Hall, begins publication (Oxford University Press).

Mathematics

• January 6 – The Luhn algorithm, devised by IBM information scientist Hans Peter Luhn, is described in a United States patent.^[13]
• Klaus Roth publishes a paper^[14] laying the foundations for modern discrepancy theory.
• Leonard Jimmie Savage publishes Foundations of Statistics, promoting Bayesian statistics.

Medicine

• February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• August 10 – British epidemiologist Richard Doll submits a study on the risk to workers in asbestos manufacture of mortality from lung cancer.^[15]
• The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris.
  • December 23 – Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston carries out the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins.^[16]
• The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine (U.S.) and Largactil (U.K.)
• The sucrose gap is introduced by Robert Stämpfli for the reliable measurement of action potential in nerve fibers.^[17][18]

Metrology

• 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures proposes the six original SI base units.
• Alexander Macmillan publishes the "Macmillan correction" to account for errors in the calculation of velocity of an object moving along a gradient due to viscous effects and wall proximity.

Physics

• January 2 – Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany at Imperial College London report achieving low-loss light transmission through a 75 cm long optical fiber bundle.^[19]
• March 1 – Castle Bravo: United States carries out a thermonuclear weapon test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
• September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.^[20]
• First tokamak built, in the Soviet Union.^[21]

Psychology

• Summer – Robbers Cave Experiment carried out by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif.^[22]
• Man Meets Dog is published by Konrad Lorenz.

Technology

• June 26 – Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the first civilian nuclear power station, is commissioned in the Soviet Union.^[23]
• June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.^[24]
• September 30 – The submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy.
• October 18 – Texas Instruments announces development of the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, manufactured in Indianapolis; it goes on sale the following month.
• December 16 – The first synthetic diamond is produced.^[25]
• New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat.^[26]
• The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.^[27]
• Staley T. McBrayer invents the Vanguard web offset press for newspaper printing in Fort Worth, Texas.^[28]
• The angle grinder is invented by German company Ackermann + Schmitt (Flex-Elektrowerkzeuge).

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Kunihiko Kodaira and Jean-Pierre Serre, the latter being the youngest-ever winner, at age 27
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Max Born and Walther Bothe
  • Chemistry – Linus Pauling
  • Medicine – John Franklin Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins

Births

• January 16 – Morten P. Meldal, Danish Nobel Chemistry laureate, 2022.^[29]
• February 9 – Kevin Warwick, English scientist, author of March of the Machines.
• March – Clare Marx, English surgeon.
• May 14 – Peter J. Ratcliffe, English cellular biologist, Nobel Medicine laureate, 2019.
• June 20 – Ilan Ramon (died 2003), Israeli astronaut.
• July 11 – Julia King, English materials engineer.
• July 17 – Angela Kasner, German physical chemist and Chancellor.
• August 28 – George M. Church, American geneticist, molecular engineer and chemist.
• September 5 – Myeong-Hee Yu, South Korean microbiologist.
• November 1 – Graham Colditz, Australian-born epidemiologist.
• November 7 – Vijay Kumar, Indian molecular biologist.
• Pat Hanrahan, American computer scientist.
• George McGavin, Scottish entomologist.
• Huda Zoghbi, Lebanese-born geneticist.

Deaths

• January 17 – Leonard Eugene Dickson (born 1874), American mathematician.
• March 7
  • Otto Diels (born 1876), German Nobel Chemistry laureate, 1950.
  • Ludwik Hirszfeld (born 1884), Polish microbiologist and serologist.
• April 10 – Auguste Lumière (born 1862), French inventor, film pioneer.
• April 21 – Emil Post (born 1897), American mathematician and logician.
• June 7 – Alan Turing (born 1912), English mathematician and computer scientist (probable suicide).^[30]
• July 11 – Henry Valentine Knaggs (born 1859), English practitioner of naturopathic medicine.
• October 3 – Vera Gaze (born 1899), Soviet Russian astronomer.
• October 8 – Dimitrie Pompeiu (born 1873), Romanian mathematician.
• November 29 – Enrico Fermi (born 1901), Italian American physicist.