1980 in science

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The year1980 in scienceand technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 16 – Atotal solar eclipseis seen in North Africa and West Asia.
• March 1 – TheVoyager 1probe confirms the existence ofJanus,a moon ofSaturn.
• October 3 – The main-belt asteroid2404 Antarcticais discovered by Czech astronomerAntonín Mrkos.
• November 12 –Voyager program:TheNASAspace probeVoyager Imakes its closest approach toSaturnwhen it flies within 77,000 miles (124,000 km) of theplanet's cloud-tops and sends the first high resolution images of the world back to scientists onEarth.

Chemistry

• John B. Goodenough,working with colleagues at theUniversity of OxfordInorganic ChemistryLaboratory, identifies the cathode material that enables development of the rechargeablelithium-ion battery.
• Royal Society of Chemistryformed by merger of theRoyal Institute of Chemistry,theChemical Society,theFaraday Societyand theSociety for Analytical Chemistry,with headquarters in London.

Computer science

• May 22 – Thearcade gamePac-Manis released in Japan.
• June 23 –Tim Berners-Leebegins work onENQUIRE,the system that will lead to the creation of theWorld Wide Weba decade later.
• July –Microsoft'sBill Gatesagrees to create anoperating systemfor the newIBM Personal Computer.In September,David Bradleybecomes one of the "original 12" engineers working on the project (underDon Estridge) and is responsible for theROM BIOScodeand for developing theControl-Alt-Deletecommand.
• September – The "Chinese room"argument is introduced in a paper byJohn Searle.
• September 30 –Digital Equipment Corporation,IntelandXeroxintroduce theDIXstandard forEthernet,which is the first implementation outside of Xerox and the first to support 10 Mbit/s speeds.
• Atarirelease a conversion of the hit arcade gameSpace Invadersfor theAtari 2600which popularises the homevideo game console.
• Usenetestablished at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillandDuke University.
• Convolutional neural networksare introduced in a paper by Kunihiko Fukushima.

Geophysics

• May 18 – The1980 eruption of Mount St. Helensvolcano inWashington (state)kills 57, including American volcanologistDavid A. Johnston.
• June 6 –LuisandWalter AlvarezwithFrank Asaroand Helen Michels propose theAlvarez hypothesis,that themass extinctionof thedinosaurswas caused by theimpactof a largeasteroid66 million years ago, theCretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
• October 10 – The 7.1 M_w El Asnam earthquakeshakes northernAlgeriawith a maximumMercalli intensityof X (Extreme), killing 2,633–5,000.
• November 23 – The 6.9 M_w Irpinia earthquakeshakes southern Italy with a maximumMercalli intensityof X (Extreme), killing 2,483–4,900.

History of science and technology

• Voprosy istorii estestvozhaniyi i tekhniki( "Questions of the history of science and technology" ) begins publication under the auspices of theAcademy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Medicine

• May 8 – Global eradication ofsmallpoxcertified by theWorld Health Organization.
• August 28 – First clinically useful image of a patient's internal tissues usingmagnetic resonance imaging(MRI) is obtained using a full-body scanner built by a team led byJohn Mallardat theUniversity of Aberdeen.
• December – First successful humanheart transplantationto use theimmunosuppressantcyclosporine.
• Global campaign to eradicateDracunculiasis(Guinea worm disease) begins at theU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• The much-enlarged third edition of theAmerican Psychiatric Association'sDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders(DSM-III), produced under the control ofRobert Spitzer,is published.
• First commercialMRIwhole body scannermanufactured byOxford Instrumentsfor installation atHammersmith Hospital,London.

Paleontology

• First four (ankle) bones of "Little Foot"(Stw 573), a nearly complete young femaleAustralopithecusfossil skeleton capable of walking upright are found in the cave system ofSterkfontein,South Africa,eventually dated at around 3.67 million years BP but not identified at this time.

Physics

• German physicianKlaus von Klitzing,working at the high magnetic field laboratory in Grenoble with silicon-based samples developed by Michael Pepper and Gerhard Dorda, makes the unexpected discovery that the Hall conductivity is exactly quantized, theQuantum Hall effect.

Zoology

• TheCooloola monster,anorthopteran,is discovered inQueensland,Australia.

Other events

• January 6 –Global Positioning Systemtimeepochbegins at 00:00 UTC.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics–James Watson Cronin,Val Logsdon Fitch
  • Chemistry–Paul Berg,Walter Gilbert,Frederick Sanger
  • Medicine–Baruj Benacerraf,Jean Dausset,George D. Snell
• Turing Award–C. A. R. Hoare

Births

• January 31 –Dan Milisavljevic,Canadianastronomer.
• November 22 –Shawn Fanning,Americancomputer programmer.

Deaths

• January 2 –Alexandra Illmer Forsythe(b.1918), American computer scientist.
• January 3 –Joy Adamson(b.1910),Silesian-bornKenyanwildlife conservationist(murdered).
• January 8 –John Mauchly(b.1907), American co-inventor of theENIACcomputer.
• February 1 –Toshiko Yuasa(b.1909),Japanese-bornnuclear physicist.
• February 7 –Secondo Campini(b.1904),Italianjet enginepioneer.
• March 18 –Ludwig Guttmann(b.1899), German-bornBritishneurologistand pioneer of paralympic games.
• May 28 –Rolf Nevanlinna(b.1895),Finnishmathematician.
• June 18 –Kazimierz Kuratowski(b.1896),Polishmathematician.
• July 1 –C. P. Snow(b.1905),Englishphysicistand novelist.
• August 29 –Franco Basaglia(b.1924),Italianpsychiatrist.
• October 18 –Hans Ferdinand Mayer(b. 1895),Germanphysicist.
• October 21 –Hans Asperger(b.1906),Austrianpediatrician.
• October 31 –Elizebeth Smith Friedman(b.1892),Americancryptanalyst.
• November 4 –Elsie MacGill(b. 1905), Canadianaeronauticalengineer, "Queen of the Hurricanes".
• December 16 –Hellmuth Walter(b.1900), German-born mechanical engineer and inventor.