1970 in science

The year 1970 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 11 – The Ohsumi satellite is launched, making Japan the fourth country to launch a satellite into orbit.
• March 31 – The Explorer 1 satellite reenters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
• April 11 – The Apollo 13 space mission is launched, but has to be aborted on April 13.
• April 17 – Apollo 13 returns safely to Earth.
• June 1 – Soyuz 9, a two-man spacecraft, is launched from the Soviet Union for an orbital flight of nearly 18 days, an endurance record at this time.
• August 31 – Solar eclipse of August 31, 1970: An annular solar eclipse is visible in Oceania, and is the 14th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 144.
• September 20 – Luna 16 lands on the Moon and lifts off the next day with samples, landing back on Earth September 24.
• October 20 – The Zond 8 lunar orbiter is launched by the Soviet Union.
• November 17 – Lunokhod 1, the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, lands on Mare Imbrium on the Moon after being released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.
• December 15 – Venera 7 lands on Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to transmit data from another planet successfully (launched August 17).

Biology

• August – Songs of the Humpback Whale, produced by Roger Payne, is released, publicly demonstrating whale vocalization for the first time and becoming influential in public support for whale conservation.
• The Parc naturel régional de Camargue is established in the south of France.

Chemistry

• August – Ulrich K. Laemmli's refinement of the SDS-PAGE method is published.

Computer science

• January 1 – Unix time begins at 00:00:00 UTC.
• June – The Datapoint 2200 is announced by the Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC).
• June–August – The programming language FLOW is devised by Jef Raskin.
• November 17 – The first United States patent for the computer mouse is issued to Douglas Engelbart.
• Bomber by Len Deighton, the first novel written on a word processor (the IBM MT/ST), is published in England.
• The first Pascal compiler is released by Niklaus Wirth.
• The Xerox PARC computer laboratory is opened in Palo Alto, California.

Earth sciences

• January 4 – The Tonghai earthquake (7.1 Template:M) occurs in Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, killing an estimated 14,621 and injuring 26,783.
• May 24 – Drilling on the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins on the Kola Peninsula of Russia.

Mathematics

• Conway's Game of Life is devised by John Horton Conway.
• Kurt Gödel's ontological proof of the existence of God is circulated.

Medicine

• The Dubowitz Score for estimating the gestational age of babies is published by Lilly and Victor Dubowitz.
• The Exeter hip replacement stem is first implanted at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter, England.
• The first case of monkeypox in humans is identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Physics

• The GIM mechanism is predicted by Sheldon Glashow, John Iliopoulos and Luciano Maiani.

Psychology

• The minimal group paradigm is developed by Henri Tajfel.
• Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I is published by Konrad Lorenz.

Technology

• June 2 – The Cleddau Bridge collapses during construction in Wales, killing four and leading to the introduction of new standards for box girder bridges in the United Kingdom.

Events

• June 19 – The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is signed into international law, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics – Alan Baker, Heisuke Hironaka, Sergei Novikov and John Griggs Thompson
• Nobel Prizes:
  • Physics – Hannes Alfvén, Louis Néel
  • Chemistry – Luis F. Leloir
  • Medicine – Bernard Katz, Ulf von Euler, Julius Axelrod
• Turing Award – James H. Wilkinson

Births

• March 27 – Eleanor Maguire, Irish-born neuropsychologist.
• August 1 – Elon Lindenstrauss, Israeli mathematician.
• September 3 – Stanislav Smirnov, Russian-born mathematician.

Deaths

• January 5 – Max Born (b. 1882), German physicist and recipient of the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics.
• January 27 – Marietta Blau (b. 1894), Austrian physicist.
• April 27 – Orii Hyōjirō (b. 1883), Japanese animal specimen collector.
• May 1 – Ralph Hartley (b. 1888), American electrical engineer.
• July 20 – Margaret Reed Lewis (b. 1881), American cell biologist.
• July 29 – Emanuel Miller (b. 1892), English child psychiatrist.
• August 1 – Otto Heinrich Warburg (b. 1883), German physiologist and winner of the 1931 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
• September 22 – Vojtěch Jarník (b. 1897), Czech mathematician.