1984 in science

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The year 1984 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
• The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the United States converts the 36-foot radio telescope on Kitt Peak (originally built in 1967) to the ARO 12m Radio Telescope.

Biology

• First known case of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in England.
• The enzyme telomerase is discovered by Carol W. Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn in the ciliate Tetrahymena.

Chemistry and Physics

• Peter Kramer and Dan Shechtman publish their discoveries of what will soon afterwards be named quasicrystals.

Computer science

• January 24 – Apple Computer place the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States. It will be the first successful PC to use a graphical user interface.
• June 6 – The Tetris tile-matching video game, designed by Alexey Pajitnov, is launched in the Soviet Union.

History of science

• Robert Gwyn Macfarlane publishes Alexander Fleming: The Man and the Myth.

Paleontology

• The fossil skeleton of the hominid "Turkana Boy" is discovered in Kenya.

Physiology and medicine

• February 3 – Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.
• April 22 – Dr. Robert Gallo and Margaret Heckler of United States Public Health Service announce the discovery of HTLV-III as the virus that causes AIDS.

Technology

• July 21 – In Jackson, Michigan, a factory robot crushes a worker against a safety bar in apparently the first robot-related death in the United States.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer
  • Chemistry – Robert Bruce Merrifield
  • Medicine – Niels K. Jerne, Georges J. F. Köhler, César Milstein
• Turing Award – Niklaus Wirth

Deaths

• February 21 – Anna Baetjer (b. 1899), American toxicologist.
• May 13 – Stanislaw Ulam (b. 1909), Polish American mathematician.
• May 24 – Sir Stanley Hooker (b. 1907), English aeronautical engineer.
• August 6 – Abraham Lilienfeld (b. 1920), American epidemiologist.
• August 11 – George Streisinger (b. 1927), Hungarian American molecular biologist, the first person to clone a vertebrate.
• October 20 – Paul Dirac (b. 1902), English-born physicist.
• November 20 – Charles C. Conley (b. 1933), American mathematician working on dynamical systems.
• December 20 – Stanley Milgram (b. 1933), American social psychologist.