1999 in science

The year 1999 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Aeronautics

• February 27 – While trying to circumnavigate the world in a hot air balloon, Colin Prescot and Andy Elson set a new endurance record after being in their balloon for 233 hours and 55 minutes.
• March 3–20 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones successfully complete a non-stop circumnavigation of the world in a hot air balloon.

Astronomy and space exploration

 

Total solar eclipse of August 11, viewed from France

• January 31 – A total penumbral lunar eclipse.
• February 7 – Stardust is launched on a mission to collect samples of a comet coma, and return them to Earth.
• February 16 – Annular solar eclipse, visible from Australia.
• July 20 – Mercury program: Liberty Bell 7 is raised from the Atlantic Ocean.
• July 28 – Partial lunar eclipse, visible from Australia, eastern Asia, and western North America.
• July 31 – NASA intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the Moon's surface.
• August 11 – Total solar eclipse, visible from Europe, across the Middle East, and ending in India.
• December 16 – The Beethoven Burst (GRB 991216) is one of the most powerful detected Gamma-ray bursts.
• NASA loses two Mars probes, the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander.
• The Subaru 8.3 m and Gemini North 8.1 m reflecting telescopes open at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.
• The Cetus Dwarf galaxy is discovered.
• M–sigma relation first presented.^[1]

Biology

• November 1 – Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds comes into force.
• Late – Pest-exclusion fence around Zealandia (wildlife sanctuary) in Wellington, New Zealand, completed.
• The bacterium Thiomargarita namibiensis is discovered off the coast of Namibia. At 0.3mm in diameter, it is largest bacteria yet^[update] discovered.

Chemistry

• Elements 118 and 116 are claimed to be made for the first time; later retracted when results cannot be replicated.

Computer science

• March 26 – The Melissa worm attacks the Internet.
• June – RFC 2616 defines HTTP/1.1, the version of Hypertext Transfer Protocol in common use.
• September 21 – David Bowie's Hours becomes the first complete music album by a major artist available to download over the Internet in advance of the physical release.^[2]
• First working 3-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at IBM's Almaden Research Center. First execution of Grover's algorithm.
• The term 'Web 2.0' is coined by Darcy DiNucci.^[3]
• Probable date – First emojis introduced, in Japan.^{[citation needed]}

Geology

• January 25 – A 6.0 Richter scale earthquake hits western Colombia, killing at least 1,000.
• August 17 – The 7.6 M_w  İzmit earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 17,118–17,127 dead and 43,953–50,000 injured.

History of science and technology

• Boris Chertok publishes «Ракеты и люди» (Rockets and people), a history of the Soviet rocket program.

Mathematics

• Eric M. Rains and Neil Sloane extend tree counting.^[4]
• Thomas Callister Hales proves the honeycomb theorem.^[5]

Paleontology

• First fossil of Kenyanthropus Pliocene hominin discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya.

Physics

• June 18 – Bulgaria becomes a member of CERN.
• October 25 – Randall–Sundrum model presented by Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum.^[6][7]

Physiology and medicine

• April 16 – Russell Foster and his team at Imperial College London publish their discovery of the non-rod, non-cone, intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) in the mammalian eye which provide input to the circadian rhythm system.^[8]
• October – Huda Zoghbi demonstrates that Rett syndrome is caused by mutations in the gene MECP2.^[9]

Psychology

• The Dunning–Kruger effect, a cognitive bias, is first described by American psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger.^[10]

Telecommunications

• January 19 – The first BlackBerry is released, using the same hardware as the Inter@ctive pager 950, and running on the Mobitex network.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Gerardus 't Hooft, Martinus J.G. Veltman
  • Chemistry – Ahmed H. Zewail
  • Medicine – Günter Blobel
• Turing Award: Fred Brooks
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: John Frederick Dewey

Deaths

• February 21 – Gertrude B. Elion (b. 1918), American pharmacologist, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
• February 25 – Glenn T. Seaborg (b. 1912), American physical chemist, Nobel laureate in Chemistry.
• March 17 – Herbert E. Grier (b. 1911), American electrical engineer.
• April 28 – Arthur Leonard Schawlow (b. 1921), American physicist, Nobel laureate in Physics.
• May 8 – Edward Abraham (b. 1913), English biochemist.
• May 26 – Waldo Semon (b. 1898), American inventor.
• July 8 – Pete Conrad (b. 1930), American astronaut.
• November 11 – Vivian Fuchs (b. 1908), English geologist and explorer.
• November 25 – Pierre Bézier (b. 1910), French design engineer.

References

1. Merritt, David (1999). "Black holes and galaxy evolution". In Combes, F.; Mamon, G. A.; Charmandaris, V. (eds.). Dynamics of Galaxies: From the Early Universe to the Present. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Vol. 197. pp. 221–232. arXiv:astro-ph/9910546. Bibcode:2000ASPC..197..221M. ISBN 978-1-58381-024-8.
2. Cummings, Sue (1999-09-22). "The Flux in Pop Music Has a Distinctly Download Beat to It". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-11-01.
3. DiNucci, Darcy (1999). "Fragmented Future" (PDF). Print. 53 (4): 32. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-11-10. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
4. Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
5. Hales, Thomas C. (January 2001). "The Honeycomb Conjecture". Discrete and Computational Geometry. 25 (1): 1–22. arXiv:math/9906042. doi:10.1007/s004540010071. MR 1797293. S2CID 14849112.
6. Randall, Lisa; Sundrum, Raman (1999). "Large Mass Hierarchy from a Small Extra Dimension". Physical Review Letters. 83 (17): 3370–3. arXiv:hep-ph/9905221. Bibcode:1999PhRvL..83.3370R. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.3370.
7. Randall, Lisa; Sundrum, Raman (1999). "An Alternative to Compactification". Physical Review Letters. 83 (23): 4690–3. arXiv:hep-th/9906064. Bibcode:1999PhRvL..83.4690R. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.4690. S2CID 18530420.
8. Lucas, R. J.; Freedman, M. S.; Muñoz, M.; Garcia-Fernández, J. M.; Foster, R. G. (1999-04-16). "Regulation of the mammalian pineal by non-rod, non-cone, ocular photoreceptors". Science. 284 (5413): 505–507. Bibcode:1999Sci...284..505L. doi:10.1126/science.284.5413.505. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 10205062.
9. Amir, Ruthie E.; Van den Veyver, Ignatia; Wan, Mimi; Tran, Charles; Francke, Uta; Zoghbi, Huda Y. (1999). "Rett syndrome is caused by mutations in X-linked MECP2, encoding methyl-CpG-binding protein 2". Nature Genetics. 23 (2): 185–8. doi:10.1038/13810. PMID 10508514. S2CID 3350350.
10. Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David (1999). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 77 (6): 1121–1134. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.64.2655. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121. PMID 10626367. S2CID 2109278.