1990 in science

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The year 1990 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 14 – The Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is sent back from the Voyager 1 probe after completing its primary mission, from around 3.5 billion miles away.
• April 23 – Gamma ray burst GRB 090423 is detected, coming from the most distant known astronomical object of any kind at this time.
• April 24 – The Space Shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.
• October 13 – Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990: A 44 kilogram, 41.5 km/s meteoroid passes above Czechoslovakia and Poland at 97.9 km. It is the first time calculations of the orbit of such a body based on photographic records from two distant places is made.

Biology and medicine

• The Human Genome Project is founded.

Computer science

• February – Adobe Photoshop 1.0 graphics software, devised by Thomas Knoll, is released.
• November 12 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web.
• November 13 – The first known web page is written.
• Approximate date – Satoshi Tajiri begins creating the first Pokémon game.

History of science

• Thomas W. Laqueur publishes Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud (Harvard University Press).

Mathematics

• Victor Kolyvagin introduces Euler systems.
• Ruth Lawrence publishes a paper on homological representations of the Hecke algebra, introducing, among other things, certain novel linear representations of the braid group, the Lawrence–Krammer representation.

Paleontology

• August 12 – "Sue", the best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen ever found, is discovered in South Dakota by Sue Hendrickson.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Vladimir Drinfeld, Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones, Shigefumi Mori and Edward Witten
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Jerome I. Friedman, Henry W. Kendall, Richard Taylor
  • Chemistry – Elias James Corey
  • Medicine – Joseph E. Murray, E. Donnall Thomas
• Turing Award – Fernando J. Corbató

Deaths

• January 4 – Prof. Doc Edgerton, (b. 1903), American electrical engineer.
• January 14 – Rosalind Pitt-Rivers (b. 1907), English biochemist.
• January 26 – Lewis Mumford (b. 1895), American historian and philosopher of science.
• March 20 – Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild (b. 1910), English polymath.
• March 22 – Gerald Bull (b. 1928), Canadian engineer.
• March 24 – An Wang (b. 1920), Chinese American computer designer.
• October 9 – Murray Bowen (b. 1913), American psychiatrist and pioneer of family therapy.
• October 17 – Hans Freudenthal (b. 1905), Dutch mathematician.