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The year 1976 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.


Astronomy and space exploration

* March – Faber–Jackson relation presented by astronomers
Sandra M. Faber Sandra Moore Faber (born December 28, 1944) is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works a ...
and Robert Earl Jackson. * June 18 –
Gravity Probe A Gravity Probe A (GP-A) was a space-based experiment to test the equivalence principle, a feature of Einstein's theory of relativity. It was performed jointly by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the National Aeronautics and Space ...
, a satellite-based experiment to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, is launched. * July 20 – Viking program: The '' Viking 1'' lander successfully lands on Mars. * July 31 – NASA releases the famous ' Face on Mars' photograph, taken by '' Viking 1'' * August 7 – Viking program: '' Viking 2'' enters into orbit around Mars. * August 22 – Luna program: Luna 24 successfully makes an unmanned landing on the Moon, the last for 37 years. * September 3 – Viking program: The '' Viking 2'' spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars and takes the first close-up color photographs of the planet's surface. * September 17 – Space Shuttle ''Enterprise'' rolled out. * '' Universe'', a public domain film produced by Lester Novros for NASA, is released.


Aviation

* January 21 – Concorde begins commercial flights. * December 8 – First flight of production
General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine Multirole combat aircraft, multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it ...
.


Chemistry

* May –
Marion M. Bradford Marion Mckinley Bradford (October 28, 1946 - May 3, 2021) was an American scientist who developed and patented the Bradford protein assay, a method to quickly quantify the amount of protein in a sample. His paper describing the method is among th ...
publishes the Bradford protein assay method. * Oberlin, Endo and Koyama publish evidence of the creation of
carbon nanotube A scanning tunneling microscopy image of a single-walled carbon nanotube Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with diameters typically measured in nanometers. ''Single-wall carbon na ...
s using a vapor-growth technique.


Computer science

* January – The
Cray-1 The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed, manufactured and marketed by Cray Research. Announced in 1975, the first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976. Eventually, over 100 Cray-1s were sold, making it one of the ...
, the first commercially developed
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
, is released by Seymour Cray's Cray Research. Model 001 is installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States. * March – Peter Chen's key paper on the entity–relationship model is published, having first been presented at a conference in September 1975. * April 1 –
Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
Company is formed by
Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...
and
Steve Wozniak Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, inventor, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, with business partner Steve Jobs, he c ...
in California and on April 11 they launch their first computer, the Apple I, for the U.S. hobbyist market. * November 26 – Little-known company Microsoft is officially registered with the Office of the
Secretary of State of New Mexico The secretary of state of New Mexico is a constitutional officer in the executive branch of government of the U.S. state of New Mexico. Twenty-six individuals have held the office of secretary of state since statehood. Since 1923, every elected Ne ...
. * December – Release of Electric Pencil (originated by Michael Shrayer), the first word processor for home computers.


Cryptography

* November – An asymmetric-key cryptosystem is published by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman who disclose the
Diffie–Hellman key exchange Diffie–Hellman key exchangeSynonyms of Diffie–Hellman key exchange include: * Diffie–Hellman–Merkle key exchange * Diffie–Hellman key agreement * Diffie–Hellman key establishment * Diffie–Hellman key negotiation * Exponential key exc ...
method of public-key agreement for public-key cryptography.


History of science and technology

* October 3 – Opening of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of History and Technology in Washington, D.C. *
Jean Gimpel Jean Gimpel (10 October 1918 – 15 June 1996) was a French historian and medievalist. Gimpel was one of three sons of a French father, the art dealer René Gimpel, and an English mother, Florence, the youngest sister of Lord Duveen. Gimpel was ...
's ''The Medieval Machine'' is published.


Mathematics

* July 11 –
Keuffel and Esser The Keuffel and Esser Co., also known as K & E, was a drafting instrument and supplies company founded in 1867 by two German immigrants, William J. D. Keuffel and Herman Esser. It was the first American company to specialize in these products., ...
manufacture the last slide rule in the United States. * Imre Lakatos' '' Proofs and Refutations: the Logic of Mathematical Discovery'' is published posthumously. * The
four color theorem In mathematics, the four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. ''Adjacent'' means that two regions sh ...
is proved by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken, the first major theorem to be proved using a computer. * Andrei Suslin and Daniel Quillen independently prove the Quillen–Suslin theorem ("Serre's conjecture") about the triviality of algebraic vector bundles on affine space.


Paleontology

* Fossil footprints of bipedal
hominini The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The t ...
from 3.6M years BP are found at Laetoli in Tanzania by Andrew Hill when visiting Mary Leakey.


Physiology, medicine and psychology

* July 27 – Delegates attending an
American Legion The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is a non-profit organization of U.S. war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militi ...
convention at The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, US, begin falling ill with a form of pneumonia: this will eventually be recognised as the first outbreak of
Legionnaires' disease Legionnaires' disease is a form of atypical pneumonia caused by any species of ''Legionella'' bacteria, quite often '' Legionella pneumophila''. Signs and symptoms include cough, shortness of breath, high fever, muscle pains, and headaches. Naus ...
and will end in the deaths of 29 attendees. * August 26 – The Ebola virus first emerges in outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fever in Yambuku, Zaire, followed by outbreaks in
Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
. * October 1–December 16 – Program of mass vaccination in the United States against the 1976 swine flu outbreak, suspended due to public fears over side-effects. * October 28 – British evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...
' book '' The Selfish Gene'' is published, introducing the term
memetics Memetics is a study of information and culture. While memetics originated as an analogy with Darwinian evolution, digital communication, media, and sociology scholars have also adopted the term "memetics" to describe an established empirical study ...
. * Dementia with Lewy bodies is first described by Japanese psychiatrist and neuropathologist Kenji Kosaka. * The term '' Münchausen syndrome by proxy'' is first coined by John Money and June Faith Werlwas. * Norman F. Dixon publishes '' On the Psychology of Military Incompetence''.


Technology

* The first laser printer is introduced by IBM (the IBM 3800).


Awards

* Nobel Prizes ** PhysicsBurton Richter,
Samuel C. C. Ting Samuel Chao Chung Ting (, born January 27, 1936) is a Chinese-American physicist who, with Burton Richter, received the Nobel Prize in 1976 for discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle. More recently he has been the principal investigator in res ...
**
Chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
William N. Lipscomb William Nunn Lipscomb Jr. (December 9, 1919April 14, 2011) was a Nobel Prize-winning People of the United States, American Inorganic chemistry, inorganic and Organic chemistry, organic chemist working in nuclear magnetic resonance, theoretical ch ...
** MedicineBaruch S. Blumberg, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek * Turing AwardMichael O. Rabin, Dana Scott


Births

* July 27 – Demis Hassabis, British artificial intelligence researcher. * November 19 – Jack Dorsey, American web developer.


Deaths

* January 19 –
Hidetsugu Yagi was a Japanese electrical engineer from Osaka, Japan. When working at Tohoku Imperial University, he wrote several articles that introduced a new antenna designed by his assistant Shintaro Uda to the English-speaking world. The Yagi antenna, ...
(b.
1886 Events January–March * January 1 – Upper Burma is formally annexed to British Burma, following its conquest in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of November 1885. * January 5– 9 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novella ''Strange ...
), Japanese
electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
. * February 1 ** Werner Heisenberg (b.
1901 Events January * January 1 – The Crown colony, British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria (Australia), Victoria and Western Australia Federation of Australia, federate as the Australia, ...
), German theoretical physicist. ** George Whipple (b.
1878 Events January–March * January 5 – Russo-Turkish War – Battle of Shipka Pass IV: Russian and Bulgarian forces defeat the Ottoman Empire. * January 9 – Umberto I becomes King of Italy. * January 17 – Battle o ...
), American pathologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
1934 Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake, Nepal–Bihar earthquake strik ...
. * April 21 – Carl Benjamin Boyer (b.
1906 Events January–February * January 12 – Persian Constitutional Revolution: A nationalistic coalition of merchants, religious leaders and intellectuals in Persia forces the shah Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar to grant a constitution, ...
), American historian of mathematics. * May 31 – Jacques Monod (b.
1910 Events January * January 13 – The first public radio broadcast takes place; live performances of the operas '' Cavalleria rusticana'' and ''Pagliacci'' are sent out over the airwaves, from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York C ...
), French
biochemist Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and Cell (biology), cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of ...
, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lyndo ...
. * August 18 –
Shintaro Uda was a Japanese inventor, and assistant to Professor Hidetsugu Yagi at Tohoku Imperial University, where together they invented the Yagi–Uda antenna in 1926. In February 1926, Yagi and Uda published their first report on the wave projector a ...
(b. 1886), Japanese electrical engineer. * October 5 – Lars Onsager (b.
1903 Events January * January 1 – Edward VII is proclaimed Emperor of India. * January 19 – The first west–east transatlantic radio broadcast is made from the United States to England (the first east–west broadcast having been ...
), Norwegian American chemist. * September 16 –
Bertha Lutz Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz (August 2, 1894 – September 16, 1976) was a Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat. Lutz became a leading figure in both the Americas, Pan American feminism, feminist movement and human rights movement. She was i ...
(b.
1894 Events January–March * January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. * January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United S ...
), Brazilian herpetologist and women's rights campaigner. * September 26 – Pál Turán (b.
1910 Events January * January 13 – The first public radio broadcast takes place; live performances of the operas '' Cavalleria rusticana'' and ''Pagliacci'' are sent out over the airwaves, from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York C ...
), Hungarian mathematician. * November 5 – Willi Hennig (b.
1913 Events January * January 5 – First Balkan War: Battle of Lemnos (1913), Battle of Lemnos – Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it will not ven ...
), German
entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...
and pioneer of cladistics.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1976 In Science 20th century in science 1970s in science