# 1954 in science

"none" is preferred when the title is sufficiently descriptive; see [[WP:SDNONE]]
The year 1954 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

## Astronomy

* November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite crashes through a roof and hits Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio, giving her a bad bruise; the first known modern case of a human being hit by a space rock.

## Biology

* January 10 – Last confirmed specimen of a Caspian tiger is killed, in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet Dag Mountains of Turkmenistan.
* Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.
* Heinz Sielmann makes the pioneering nature documentary about woodpeckers, Zimmerleute des Waldes ("Carpenters of the forest").
* Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck propose the species name bonobo for what was previously known as the pygmy chimpanzee.

## Chemistry

* Publication of the first analysis of the three-dimensional molecular structure of vitamin B$_{12}$ by a group including Dorothy Hodgkin, and utilising computer analysis provided by Kenneth Nyitray Trueblood.
* Strychnine total synthesis is first achieved in the laboratory by Robert Burns Woodward's team at Harvard.
* The Wittig reaction is discovered by German chemist Georg Wittig.

## Computer science

* January – The TRADIC Phase One computer is completed at Bell Labs in the United States, a candidate to be regarded as the first transistor computer.
* January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.

## Geology

* December 31 – The first specimens of the mineral benstonite are collected by Orlando J. Benston in the Magnet Cove igneous complex of Arkansas.

## History of science

* Joseph Needham begins publication of Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge University Press).
* A History of Technology, edited by Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard and A. R. Hall, begins publication (Oxford University Press).

## Mathematics

* January 6 – The Luhn algorithm, devised by IBM information scientist Hans Peter Luhn, is described in a United States patent.
* Klaus Roth publishes a paper laying the foundations for modern discrepancy theory.
* Leonard Jimmie Savage publishes Foundations of Statistics, promoting Bayesian statistics.

## Medicine

* February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
* August 10 – British epidemiologist Richard Doll submits a study on the risk to workers in asbestos manufacture of mortality from lung cancer.
* The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris.
** December 23 – Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston carries out the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins.
* The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine (U.S.) and Largactil (U.K.)
* The sucrose gap is introduced by Robert Stämpfli for the reliable measurement of action potential in nerve fibers.

## Metrology

* 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures proposes the six original SI base units.
* Alexander Macmillan publishes the "Macmillan correction" to account for errors in the calculation of velocity of an object moving along a gradient due to viscous effects and wall proximity.

## Physics

* January 2 – Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany at Imperial College London report achieving low-loss light transmission through a 75 cm long optical fiber bundle.
* March 1 – Castle Bravo: United States carries out a thermonuclear weapon test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
* September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.
* First tokamak built, in the Soviet Union.

## Psychology

* Summer – Robbers Cave Experiment carried out by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif.
* Man Meets Dog is published by Konrad Lorenz.

## Technology

* June 26 – Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the first civilian nuclear power station, is commissioned in the Soviet Union.
* June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.
* September 30 – The submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy.
* October 18 – Texas Instruments announces development of the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, manufactured in Indianapolis; it goes on sale the following month.
* December 16 – The first synthetic diamond is produced.
* New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat.
* The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.
* Staley T. McBrayer invents the Vanguard web offset press for newspaper printing in Fort Worth, Texas.
* The angle grinder is invented by German company Ackermann + Schmitt (Flex-Elektrowerkzeuge).

## Awards

* Fields Prize in Mathematics: Kunihiko Kodaira and Jean-Pierre Serre, the latter being the youngest-ever winner, at age 27
* Nobel Prizes
** Physics – Max Born and Walther Bothe
** Chemistry – Linus Pauling
** Medicine – John Franklin Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins

## Births

* January 16 – Morten P. Meldal, Danish Nobel Chemistry laureate, 2022.
* February 9 – Kevin Warwick, English scientist, author of March of the Machines.
* March – Clare Marx, English surgeon.
* May 14 – Peter J. Ratcliffe, English cellular biologist, Nobel Medicine laureate, 2019.
* June 20 – Ilan Ramon (died 2003), Israeli astronaut.
* July 11 – Julia King, English materials engineer.
* July 17 – Angela Kasner, German physical chemist and Chancellor.
* August 28 – George M. Church, American geneticist, molecular engineer and chemist.
* September 5 – Myeong-Hee Yu, South Korean microbiologist.
* November 1 – Graham Colditz, Australian-born epidemiologist.
* November 7 – Vijay Kumar, Indian molecular biologist.
* Pat Hanrahan, American computer scientist.
* George McGavin, Scottish entomologist.
* Huda Zoghbi, Lebanese-born geneticist.

## Deaths

* January 17 – Leonard Eugene Dickson (born 1874), American mathematician.
* March 7
** Otto Diels (born 1876), German Nobel Chemistry laureate, 1950.
** Ludwik Hirszfeld (born 1884), Polish microbiologist and serologist.
* April 10 – Auguste Lumière (born 1862), French inventor, film pioneer.
* April 21 – Emil Post (born 1897), American mathematician and logician.
* June 7 – Alan Turing (born 1912), English mathematician and computer scientist (probable suicide).
* July 11 – Henry Valentine Knaggs (born 1859), English practitioner of naturopathic medicine.
* October 3 – Vera Gaze (born 1899), Soviet Russian astronomer.
* October 8 – Dimitrie Pompeiu (born 1873), Romanian mathematician.
* November 29 – Enrico Fermi (born 1901), Italian American physicist.