The year 1992 in

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

and

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

involved many significant events, some listed below.

Anthropology

* June – British

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

Robin Dunbar proposes

Dunbar's number Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. This ...

(approximately 150) as a

cognitive Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

limit to the number of people with whom an

interpersonal relationship In social psychology, an interpersonal relation (or interpersonal relationship) describes a social association, connection, or affiliation between two or more people. It overlaps significantly with the concept of social relations, which a ...

can be maintained in human communities.

Astronomy

* January 5 –

Asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

5751 Zao is discovered by Masahiro Koishikawa. * January 9 – First confirmed detection of

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first det ...

s with announcement of the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the

pulsar A pulsar (''pulsating star, on the model of quasar'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its Poles of astronomical bodies#Magnetic poles, magnetic poles. This radiation can be obse ...

PSR B1257+12 by radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail working in the United States. * August 30 – Discovery of

15760 Albion 15760 Albion ( provisional designation ) was the first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered after Pluto and Charon. Measuring about 108–167 kilometres in diameter, it was discovered in 1992 by David C. Jewitt and Jane X. Luu at the Maun ...

, the first trans-Neptunian object to be found after

Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of Trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Su ...

and Charon. * October 31 –

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

issues an apology and lifts the

1633 Events January–March * January 20 – Galileo Galilei, having been summoned to Rome on orders of Pope Urban VIII, leaves for Florence for his journey. His carriage is halted at Ponte a Centino at the border of Tuscany, wher ...

edict of the

Inquisition The Inquisition was a Catholic Inquisitorial system#History, judicial procedure where the Ecclesiastical court, ecclesiastical judges could initiate, investigate and try cases in their jurisdiction. Popularly it became the name for various med ...

against

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

Biology

* May 21 –

Saola The saola (''Pseudoryx nghetinhensis''), also called spindlehorn, Asian unicorn, or infrequently, Vu Quang bovid, is a forest-dwelling bovid native to the Annamite Range in Vietnam and Laos. It was described in 1993 following a discovery of ...

first identified in the Vũ Quang rainforest reserve of northern

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

. This member of the

bovini The tribe Bovini or wild cattle are medium to massive bovines that are native to Eurasia, North America, and Africa. These include the enigmatic, antelope-like saola, the African and Asiatic buffaloes, and a clade that consists of bison and the ...

tribe is the first large mammal new to science anywhere in the world for more than fifty years and it will take another two decades before live specimens are recorded. * British evolutionary biologist

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...

delivers the 1992 Voltaire Lecture, "

Viruses of the Mind "Viruses of the Mind" is an essay by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, first published in the book ''Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind'' (1993). Dawkins originally wrote the essay in 1991 and delivered it as a Voltaire Lect ...

", describing religion and the belief in god as a parasitic memetic virus that infects human minds.

Computer science

* March 9 – ViolaWWW, the first popular

Web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

, created by Pei-Yuan Wei in the United States, is publicly released for

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

. * September – The

SOCKS A sock is a piece of clothing worn on the feet and often covering the ankle or some part of the Calf (leg), calf. Some types of shoes or boots are typically worn over socks. In ancient times, socks were made from leather or matted animal hair. ...

Internet protocol is made public.

Earth sciences

* September 2 – The

1992 Nicaragua earthquake The 1992 Nicaragua earthquake occurred off the coast of Nicaragua at 6:16 p.m. on 1 September. Some damage was also reported in Costa Rica. At least 116 people were killed and several more were injured. The earthquake was caused by movement ...

registering 7.7 becomes the first

tsunami earthquake In seismology, a tsunami earthquake is an earthquake which triggers a tsunami of significantly greater Seismic magnitude scales, magnitude, as measured by shorter-period seismic waves. The term was introduced by Japanese seismologist Hiroo Kanam ...

to be captured on modern broadband seismic networks.

Mathematics

* International Society for Bayesian Analysis founded by Arnold Zellner.

Medicine

* October – First Cochrane Centre opens (in the UK) and the first Cochrane Review Groups (Pregnancy & Childbirth and Subfertility) are registered. * October 29 – The

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respo ...

approves Depo Provera for use as a

contraceptive Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth control only be ...

in the United States. * Brugada syndrome first recognised.

Physics

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

becomes a member of

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

Technology

* November 23 – The

IBM Simon The IBM Simon Personal Communicator (simply known as IBM Simon) is a cellular phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) designed by International Business Machines (IBM), released in 1994. Built on an x86 processor, the IBM Simon features a ...

, a touchscreen

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

and

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...

considered the first

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

, is introduced. * December 3 – The first

text message Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile phones, tablet computers, smartwatches, desktop computer, des ...

is sent. The message reads "Merry Christmas".

Awards

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

s **

Physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

: Georges Charpak **

Chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

: Rudolph A. Marcus **

Medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

: Edmond H. Fischer, Edwin G. Krebs *

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

Butler Lampson Butler W. Lampson (born December 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist best known for his contributions to the development and implementation of distributed personal computing. Education and early life After graduating from the Lawrencev ...

* Wollaston Medal for Geology: Martin Harold Phillips Bott

Births

July 23 Events Pre-1600 * 811 – Byzantine Empire, Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I plunders the First Bulgarian Empire, Bulgarian capital of Pliska and captures Khan Krum's treasury. *1319 – A Knights Hospitaller fleet scores a Battle of Chi ...

– Diwakar Vaish, Indian roboticist

Deaths

* January 1 –

Rear Admiral Rear admiral is a flag officer rank used by English-speaking navies. In most European navies, the equivalent rank is called counter admiral. Rear admiral is usually immediately senior to commodore and immediately below vice admiral. It is ...

Grace Hopper Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of mach ...

(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 pioneer

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. * April 6 –

Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov ( ; – April 6, 1992) was an Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. H ...

(b.

1920 Events January * January 1 ** Polish–Soviet War: The Russian Red Army increases its troops along the Polish border from 4 divisions to 20. ** Kauniainen in Finland, completely surrounded by the city of Espoo, secedes from Espoo as its ow ...

), American science author. * April 10 – Peter D. Mitchell (b. 1920), English Nobel laureate in chemistry. * June 13 – Remziye Hisar, (b. 1902), Turkish chemist. * July 24 – Gavriil Ilizarov (b.

1921 Events January * January 2 ** The Association football club Cruzeiro Esporte Clube, from Belo Horizonte, is founded as the multi-sports club Palestra Italia by Italian expatriates in First Brazilian Republic, Brazil. ** The Spanish lin ...

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

orthopedic surgeon Orthopedic surgery or orthopedics (American and British English spelling differences, alternative spelling orthopaedics) is the branch of surgery concerned with conditions involving the musculoskeletal system. Orthopedic surgeons use both surgic ...

. * August 26 –

Daniel Gorenstein Daniel E. Gorenstein (January 1, 1923 – August 26, 1992) was an American mathematician best remembered for his contribution to the classification of finite simple groups. Gorenstein mastered calculus at age 12 and subsequently matriculated at ...

(b.

1923 In Greece, this year contained only 352 days as 13 days was skipped to achieve the calendrical switch from Julian to Gregorian Calendar. It happened there that Wednesday, 15 February ''(Julian Calendar)'' was followed by Thursday, 1 March ' ...

), American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. * November 5 – Jan Oort (b.

1900 As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15 ...

), Dutch

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

References

{{reflist 20th century in science 1990s in science