1954 in science

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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.
• Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.
• Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck propose the species name Bonobo for what was previously known as the pygmy chimpanzee.

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.

Computer science

• 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.

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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Metrology

• 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures proposes the six original SI base units.

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.
• March 1 – United States carries out a hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
• September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.

Psychology

• 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.
• June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.
• September 30 – The submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy.
• December 16 – The first synthetic diamond is produced.
• New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat.
• The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.

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

• February 9 - Kevin Warwick, English scientist, author of March of the Machines.
• June 20 – Ilan Ramon (died 2003), Israeli astronaut.
• 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.

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 February 11, 1897), American mathematician and logician.
• June 7 – Alan Turing (born 1912), English mathematician and computer scientist (probable suicide).
• July 11 – Henry Valentine Knaggs (born 1859), English practitioner of naturopathic medicine.
• October 3 – Vera Fedorovna Gaze (born 1899), Soviet Russian astronomer.
• November 29 – Enrico Fermi (born 1901), Italian American physicist.