The year 1973 in science and technology involved one significant event, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• March 7 - Comet Kohoutek is discovered
• April 6 - Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft
• May 14 - Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.
• Solar eclipse of June 30, 1973 - Very long total solar eclipse visible in NE South America, the Atlantic, and central Africa. During the entire Second Millennium, only seven total solar eclipses exceeded seven minutes of totality. This was the last. Observers aboard a Concorde jet were able to stretch totality to about 74 minutes by flying along the path of the moon's umbra.
• July 25 - Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.
• November 3 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury (on March 29, 1974 it became the first space probe to reach that planet).
• December 3 - Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
• December 7 - The "Big Ear" at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory begins a full time SETI radio survey, running continuously until 1995.

Biology

• December 28 - Endangered Species Act signed into law in the United States.

Chemistry

• A successful method of Vitamin B₁₂ total synthesis is reported by the groups of Robert Burns Woodward and Albert Eschenmoser.^[1][2]

Cryptography

• Asymmetric key algorithms for public-key cryptography developed by James H. Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson at the United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters.^[3]

History of science

• May 5–July 28 - BBC Television series The Ascent of Man, written and presented by Jacob Bronowski, first airs; there is also an accompanying bestselling book.

Mathematics

• Fischer Black and Myron Scholes first articulate the Black Scholes mathematical model of a financial market containing certain derivative investment instruments.^[4]

Physiology and medicine

• The term "dendritic cell" is coined by Ralph M. Steinman working with Zanvil A. Cohn.^[5]

Psychology

• David Rosenhan publishes the results of his experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis.^[6]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - Leo Esaki, Ivar Giaever, Brian David Josephson
  • Chemistry - Ernst Otto Fischer, Geoffrey Wilkinson
  • Medicine - Karl Von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen
• Turing Award - Charles W. Bachman

Births

• November 19 - Nim Chimpsky (d. 2000), chimpanzee
• December 5 - Lubo Motl, Czech theoretical physicist

Deaths

• February 11 - Hans D Jensen (b. 1907), German physicist.
• March 12 - David Lack (b. 1910), English ornithologist.
• March 14 - Howard Aiken (b. 1900), computing pioneer.

References

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