1956 in science

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The year 1956 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• March – Denham Harman proposes the free-radical theory of aging.
• Wesley K. Whitten reports developing eight-cell mouse ova to blastocyst stage in vitro.

Climatology

• May – Gilbert Plass publishes his seminal article "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change".

Computer science

• September 13 – The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team led by Reynold B. Johnson.

Mathematics

• December – Martin Gardner begins his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.

Medicine

• May 1 – Minamata disease epidemic is identified in Japan.
• November – The classic definition of obesity hypoventilation syndrome is published.
• Asian flu pandemic originates in China.

Physics

• Existence of the antineutrino is experimentally confirmed by the Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment carried out by Clyde L. Cowan and Frederick Reines.
• Existence of the antineutron is experimentally confirmed by University of California, Berkeley physicist Bruce Cork.
• DIDO heavy water enriched uranium nuclear reactor begins operation at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Oxfordshire.
• November 15 – Cooper pairs are first described by Leon Cooper.

Psychology

• January 1 – Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter's book When Prophecy Fails provides a classic study of disconfirmed expectancy.

Technology

• April 14 – 2-inch quadruplex videotape, the first practical and commercially successful analog recording videotape format, is released for the broadcast television industry by Ampex of Redwood City, California.
• August 27 – Calder Hall nuclear power station in England is first connected to the National Grid. This Magnox plant is the world's first nuclear power plant to deliver electricity in commercial quantities. Official opening is on October 17.
• November 11 – First flight of Convair B-58, the first supersonic jet bomber capable of Mach 2 flight, designed by Robert H. Widmer.
• First Chamberlin electro-mechanical keyboard instrument, developed and patented by Wisconsin inventor Harry Chamberlin, is introduced.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain
  • Chemistry – Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov
  • Medicine – André Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann, Dickinson W. Richards

Births

• April 16 – David M. Brown (died 2003), American astronaut.
• April 19 – Anne Glover, Scottish biologist.
• May 20 – Marlene Zuk, American biologist.
• October 19 – Carlo Urbani (died 2003), Italian physician, discoverer of SARS.

Deaths

• February 3 – Émile Borel (born 1871), French mathematician.
• March 17 – Irène Joliot-Curie (born 1897), French radiochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• March 22 – George Sarton (born 1884), Belgian American historian of science.
• August 25 – Alfred Kinsey (born 1894), American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University (Bloomington).
• September 22 – Frederick Soddy (born 1877), English radiochemist.
• October 30 – María Teresa Ferrari (born 1887), Argentine physician.
• November 10 – Henry Luke Bolley (born 1865), American plant pathologist.