1953 in science

The year 1953 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.

Biochemistry

Francis Crick and James D. Watson published "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid" in the British journal Nature (April 25). Often ranked as one of the most dramatic results in Biology during the 20th century because of the structural beauty and functional logic of the DNA double helix. They shared a 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Maurice Wilkins who published x-ray crystallography results for DNA in the same issue of Nature with Watson and Crick ("Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids")

Stanley L. Miller published (May 15 in Science) results from the "Miller-Urey experiment". These results surprised many chemists by showing that organic molecules present in living organisms can form easily from simple chemicals. Download the article. (PDF file)

Pariser - Pople - Parr computational quantum chemistry theory for approximating molecular orbitals. (R. Pariser and R.G. Parr, J. Chem. Phys. 21, 466, 767) (J.A. Pople, Trans. Faraday Soc. 49, 1375)

It has been estimated that there were only about 100 hand-built computers in the world in 1953. Researchers such as Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester completed a device called MEG, which did floating-point calculations. This machine evolved into the first transistorized computer, the Metro-Vickers MV950, leading to mass production of computers.
Alan Turing published an article describing the first 1,104 zeroes of the Riemann zeta-function, culminating 15 years of work on how to use computers to tackle a fundamental problem in number theory.

The Piltdown man fraud came to the attention of the world after publications such as "The Solution of the Piltdown Problem," by J. S. Weiner, K. P. Oakley and W. E. Le Gros Clark in Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Geological Series, Vol. 2, No. 3.

Maurice Ewing and Bruce Heezen discovered the deep canyon running along the center of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This was an important contibution to plate tectonics.

Rudolf Carnap published an article called "Testability and Meaning" in Readings in the Philosophy of Science which moved away from the philosophical position of Logical positivism with respect to science (particularly the heavily mathematical sciences like physics). Carnap now emphasized the idea that progress in science depends on the gradual accumulation of many small results that support our understanding of the world, a view more in line with Wittgenstein's later philosophy and biological sciences.

As part of an extended series of publications on science, Pope Pius XII published "The Technician" which instructed scientists to restrict themselves to the study of physical matter and do nothing to undermine the idea of a non-material soul or a Superior Being. "The Technician" was delivered as a papal address on Oct. 9, 1953.

In 1951 and 1952 physicists such as Frederick Reines, Enrico Fermi and Clyde Cowan discussed plans for detecting neutrinos. They built the first neutrino detector (cadmium-water target) and used the nuclear facility of Hanford, Washington as the neutrino source. The first neutrino detection experiments were performed in the Spring of 1953 and preliminary results were published that Summer ( F. Reines and C. L. Cowan, "Detection of the Free Neutrino", Phys. Rev. 92, 830). Their work led to the 1995 Nobel Prize.

B. F. Skinner published a book called Science and Human Behavior (ISBN 0029290406) which is still a controversial attempt to apply the results from behavioral studies of laboratory animals to human psychology.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory finished development of the SSM-A-17 Corporal I rocket. This was the first U.S. surface-to-surface ballistic missile and the motor was liquid fueled with red fuming nitric acid as the oxidizer.

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