History of Physics and Astronomy

1950 AD to 1974 AD

This section shows the important events in Physics and Astronomy from 1950 AD until 1974 AD. The names of people are highlighted in blue, important people are in bold blue.

1950 Field ion microscope
1950 Powell – Nobel prize for Physics
1951 Cockcroft and Walton – Nobel prize for Physics
1951 Positronium
1951 Radio galaxy identified - Smith and Baade
1951 Twenty one cm line – hydrogen – radio map of the galaxy
1951 Ultra violet observations of the Sun by rockets
1952 Bubble chamber – Glaser
1952 CERN set up
1952 H bomb – Edward Teller USA
1952 Jupiter – 12th satellite discovered
1952 Nuclear breeder reactor
1952 Sigma particle
1953 Conservation of strangeness
1953 Everest climbed
1953 Fibre optics
1953 H bomb – USSR
1953 Neutrino detected – Reines and Cowan
1953 Servomechanisms
1953 Strangeness - Gell-Mann and Nishijima
1953 Zeta particle discovered
1954 Born – Nobel prize for Physics
1954 H bomb – USA – trawler Lucky Dragon
1954 Maser
1954 Nautilus (nuclear submarine) launched
1954 Solar batteries

1955 Atomic clock
1955 Lamb – Nobel prize for Physics
1955 Unified field theory – Einstein
1956 Anti-neutrino detection
1956 Anti-proton
1956 Dubna research centre opened
1956 FORTRAN programming language introduced
1956 Hovercraft – first model version
1956 Non conservation of parity – Lee and Yang
1956 Nuclear batteries
1956 Nuclear power station - Calder Hall began operation
1956 Telephone cable - transatlantic
1957 Chelyabinsk nuclear accident – Urals
1957 Jodrell Bank – 250' radio telescope
1957 Parity violation in weak decays - Chien-Shiung Wu
1957 Sputnik I launched
1957 Sputnik II – dog Laika
1957 Windscale disaster (renamed Sellafield)
1957 Yang and Lee – Nobel prize for Physics
1957 ZETA opened at Harwell
1958 Carbon gas observed from lunar crater Alphonsus – Kosirev
1958 Cerenkov – Nobel prize for Physics
1958 Explorer I launched
1958 Tamm and Franck – Nobel prize for Physics
1958 Vanguard I
1959 Chamberlain and Segrι – Nobel prize for Physics
1959 Dounreay critical
1959 Impossibility of observation of contraction - Terrell
1959 Lunik I becomes the first artificial planet
1959 Lunik II crashed into the Moon
1959 Lunik III– first pictures of the far side of the Moon
1959 Maser echo from Venus
1959 Mφssbauer effect
1959 Nuclear powered aircraft carrier Sanvanah
1959 Pioneer 4 - orbit round the Sun
1959 Radar contact with the Sun
1959 Xerox photocopier

1960 Glaser – Nobel prize for Physics
1960 Gravitational red shift – Pound and Rebka
1960 Krypton 86 as basic length unit
1960 Laser – ruby laser invented by Theodore Maiman
1960 Mossbauer effect discovered
1960 Quasar identified optically – Matthews and Sandage
1960 Sea floor spreading theory proposed
1960 Space flight – Sputnik V – 4500 kg – Strlka and Belka recovered alive
1960 Synchrotron – 28 GeV machine at CERN
1961 Eight fold way
1961 Neutrino (n_m) discovered
1961 Nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise in service
1961 Nuclear power station – Calder Hall opened by the Queen
1961 Space flight – chimpanzee in Mercury capsule
1961 Space flight – first manned orbital flight – Yuri Gagarin
1961 Space flight – Mercury 3 – Alan Sheppard
1961 Space flight – Mercury 4 – Gus Grissom
1961 Space flight – Titov – 17 orbits
1962 Cuban crisis
1962 Eta 0 discovered
1962 First hologram produced - Leith and Upatnieks
1962 Josephson junction
1962 Kzi 0 discovered
1962 Landau – Nobel prize for Physics
1962 Nuclear power stations – Bradwell and Berkeley built
1962 Quasars discovered
1962 Semiconductor laser
1962 Space flight - Ariel – British satellite
1962 Space flight – Mariner 2 flies close to Venus – surface temperature 700 K
1962 Space flight – Mercury 6 – John Glenn – three orbits
1962 Space flight – Mercury 7
1962 Space flight – Mercury 8
1962 Space flight – Vostok 3 – 64 orbits
1962 Space flight – Vostok 4 – 48 orbits
1962 Telstar – first communications satellite launched
1962 Two types of neutrino - Lederman, Steinberger, Schwartz
1963 Geostationary satellite launched for the first time
1963 Holograms – first successful ones produced
1963 Mars – water vapour – Dolfus – Mount Wilson 100"
1963 Nuclear test ban treaty signed
1963 Space flight - Mercury 9 – 22 orbits – final Mercury flight
1963 Space flight – Vostok 5 – 81 orbits
1963 Space flight – Vostok 6 – 48 orbits – Tereschkova – first woman in space
1963 Wigner, Goeppert- Mayer and Jensen – Nobel prize for Physics
1964 A bomb - China
1964 Hunterston nuclear power station opened
1964 Omega minus discovered - Barnes
1964 Principle of unitary symmetry
1964 Quark – hunting of the quark begun
1964 Quark theory of hadrons - Gell-Mann, Zweig
1964 Space flight – Gemini unmanned test flight
1964 Space flight – Ranger 7 – close up photos of the Moon
1964 Space flight – Voshkod I – 16 orbits of the Earth – three astronauts
1964 Townes, Prokharov and Basov – Nobel prize for Physics

1965 Feynmann, Schwinger and Tomaga – Nobel prize for Physics
1965 Nuclear power stations – Dungeness A, Hinkley Point A, Trawsfyndd
1965 Space flight – Gemini 3
1965 Space flight – Gemini 4
1965 Space flight – Gemini 6 and 7 rendezvous in orbit (206 orbits Gemini 7)
1965 Space flight – Voshkod II – seventeen orbits – first space walk
1965 Trident – automatic landing
1965 TV – Early Bird satellite first used for TV
1966 Herstmonceux 98" reflector completed
1966 Kastler – Nobel Prize for Physics
1966 Linear accelerator – 20 GeV opened at Stanford California
1966 Nuclear power station – Oldbury
1966 Nuclear power station - Sizewell
1966 Nuclear reactor – fast reactor - Dounreay at 60 MW
1966 Space flight – final Gemini flights – 8,9,10,11,12
1966 Space flight – Luna 9 – first soft landing on the Moon
1966 Space flight – Lunar Orbiter – view of Earth from the Moon
1966 Space flight – Surveyor I – soft landing on the Moon
1967 Accelerator – smoke ring accelerator – USSR
1967 Atomic clock – caesium adopted as standard of time – 9,192,631,770 Hz
1967 Bethe – Nobel prize for Physics
1967 Electro-weak forces – unification. Weinberg and Salam
1967 Herstmonceux 98" reflector opened
1967 Pulsars – Bell and Antony
1967 Space flight – first space fatalities one USSR. Three USA
1967 Space flight - Saturn V – test firing to 11000 miles
1967 Space flight - Soyuz I
1967 Space flight – USSR – link up of two unmanned satellites
1967 Space flight – Venus 4 probe soft landing on Venus
1968 Alvarez – Nobel Prize for Physics
1968 Concorde flies
1968 Element 104 discovered
1968 Space flight - Apollo 7 orbits the Earth
1968 Space flight – Apollo 8 – men orbit the Moon
1968 Space flight – Luna 14 into lunar orbit
1968 Space flight – Soyuz 3
1968 Space flight – Zond 5 and 6 – round the Moon and back
1968 Time variance observed
1969 Black hole at the centre of galactic nuclei - Donald Lynden-Bell
1969 Boeing 747 flies
1969 Gell-Mann – Nobel prize for Physics
1969 Pulsar – first optical identification in Crab nebula
1969 Space flight – Apollo 9
1969 Space flight – Apollo 10
1969 Space flight – Apollo 11 Men land on the Moon
1969 Space flight – Apollo12
1969 Space flight – Mariner photographs Mars
1969 Space flight – rocket USSR 10 million pounds of thrust, explodes on ground
1969 Space flight – Soyuz 4 and 5 – first manned orbital link up
1969 Space flight – Soyuz 6,7 and 8 – first space welding
1969 Tu144 flies

1970 Space flight - Apollo 13
1970 Dark matter suggested – Rubin and Ford
1971 Lunar rover vehicle first used on the Moon
1971 Mars 2 capsule – first Mars landing
1972 Apollo 17 – the final Apollo mission
1973 Celestial gamma ray source
1973 Supersymmetry - Wess and Zumino
1974 Charmed quark – Ting and Richter
1974 Cygnus X1 – possible black hole
1974 Grand Unified Theory, prediction of proton life - Georgi and Glashow