The year 1963 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• May 15 - Mercury program: NASA launches the last mission of the program Mercury 9. (On June 12 NASA Administrator James E. Webb tells Congress the program is complete.)

Biology

• Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone".
• Molecular biologist Emile Zuckerkandl and physical chemist Linus Pauling introduce the term paleogenetics.^[1]
• Konrad Lorenz publishes On Aggression (Das sogenannte B se: Zur Naturgeschichte der Agression).
• Niko Tinbergen poses his four questions to be asked of any animal behavior.^[2]

Earth sciences

• November 14 - The Icelandic volcanic island of Surtsey appears above sea level.

History of science and technology

• April 1 - Industrial Monuments Survey for the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Great Britain) commenced by Rex Wailes.
• Kenneth Hudson's Industrial Archaeology: an introduction published in London.

Mathematics

• Edward Lorenz publishes his discovery of the 'butterfly effect', significant in the development of chaos theory.^[3]

Medicine

• Thomas Starzl performs the first liver transplant, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.^[4]
• James D. Hardy performs the first lung transplant.^[4]
• June - Guy Alexandre performs the first renal transplant from a heart-beating, brain-dead donor, at Saint Pierre Hospital, Leuven, Belgium.^[4]

Physics

• David H. Frisch and J. H. Smith prove radioactive decay of mesons is slowed by their motion.^[5] (See Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.)

Psychology

• Stanley Milgram publishes the results of his shock experiment on obedience to authority figures.^[6]

Technology

• Mellotron Mark I electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard, developed and built in Aston, Birmingham, England, is marketed.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen
  • Chemistry - Karl Ziegler, Giulio Natta
  • Medicine - Sir John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding Huxley

Births

Deaths

• January 28 - Jean Piccard (born 1884), Swiss-born American chemist and explorer.
• April 6 - Otto Struve (born 1897), Russian astronomer.
• May 19 - Walter Russell (born 1871), American polymath.
• October 13 - Alan A. Griffith (born 1893), English stress engineer.
• October 25 - Karl von Terzaghi (born 1883), Austrian "father of soil mechanics".

References

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