page_title: 2008 in science
section_title: Deaths
hierarchical_section_title: 2008 in science / Deaths
caption_attribution_description: English: Sir Arthur C. Clarke at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka. A visionary who predicted artificial intelligence and communications satellites that orbit the earth in fixed positions, Clarke characterizes the slow rebuilding process in the tsunami zone as "survival of the fittest." He enjoys listening to a media file of the wind of Titan, contemplates a future with "more people living off earth than on," who travel the "future homes of mankind" via space elevators. "Good wishes" he said this week, "to aspiring astronauts and cosmonauts" who will "go into space and look at the home planet."
context_page_description: The year 2008 involved numerous significant scientific events and discoveries, some of which are listed below.
context_section_description: 12 January – Howard Dalton (b. 1944), British microbiologist.
  11 February – Norbert Pfennig (b. 1925), German microbiologist.
  5 March – David Challinor (b. 1920), American biologist, naturalist, and scientific administrator at the Smithsonian Institution.
  11 March – Howard Gobioff (b. 1971), American computer scientist.
  19 March – Arthur C. Clarke (b. 1917), British science fiction author, futurist and inventor.
  8 April – Graham Higman (b. 1917), British mathematician.
  13 April – John Wheeler (b. 1911), American theoretical physicist, coined the terms black hole and wormhole.
  16 April – Edward Norton Lorenz (b. 1917), American mathematician and meteorologist, coined the term butterfly effect.
  29 April – Albert Hofmann (b. 1906), Swiss chemist, synthesizer of LSD.
  15 May – Willis Lamb (b. 1913), American physicist, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics.
  20 May – Jürgen Ehlers (b. 1929), German physicist.
  15 June – Arthur Galston (b. 1920), American botanist and bioethicist.
  22 July – Victor A. McKusick (b. 1921), American geneticist, known as the "Father of Genetic Medicine".
  5 August – Neil Bartlett (b. 1932), British chemist who prepared the first compound of a noble gas.
  23 August – Thomas Huckle Weller (b. 1915), American virologist and co-winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on polio.
  8 October – George Emil Palade (b. 1912), Romanian cell biologist, winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, discoverer of the ribosomes of the endoplasmic reticulum.
  10 November – George Rédei (b. 1921), Hungarian biologist.
  14 November – Adrian Kantrowitz (b. 1918), American cardiac surgeon.
  30 November – Ralph A. Lewin (b. 1921), Anglo-American biologist, known as "the father of green algae genetics".
  12 December – Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (b. 1923), Hungarian-Slovak-American physician, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, famous for his work on kuru, the first human prion disease demonstrated to be infectious.
caption: 19 March 2008: Arthur C. Clarke, a British futurist and science fiction author, dies aged 90.
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