1963 in science

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The year 1963 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 4 – Soviet Luna reaches Earth orbit but fails to reach the moon.
• May 15 – Mercury program: NASA launches the last mission of the program Mercury 9. (On June 12 NASA Administrator James E. Webb tells Congress the program is complete.)
• November 1 – The Arecibo Observatory, with the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, officially opens in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Biology

• Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone".
• Molecular biologist Emile Zuckerkandl and physical chemist Linus Pauling introduce the term paleogenetics.
• Konrad Lorenz publishes On Aggression (Das sogenannte Böse: Zur Naturgeschichte der Agression).
• Niko Tinbergen poses his four questions to be asked of any animal behavior.

Cartography

• Robinson projection devised by Arthur H. Robinson.

Earth sciences

• September 7 – British geophysicists Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews publish proof of seafloor spreading on the Atlantic Ocean floor.
• November 14 – The Icelandic volcanic island of Surtsey appears above sea level.

History of science and technology

• April 1 – Industrial Monuments Survey for the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Great Britain) commenced by Rex Wailes.
• Kenneth Hudson's Industrial Archaeology: an introduction published in London.

Mathematics

• Edward Lorenz publishes his discovery of the 'butterfly effect', significant in the development of chaos theory.

Medicine

• Thomas Starzl performs the first liver transplantation, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
• James D. Hardy performs the first lung transplantation.
• June – Guy Alexandre performs the first kidney transplantation from a heart-beating, brain-dead donor, at Saint Pierre Hospital, Leuven, Belgium.

Paleontology

• The type species of the early dinosaur Herrerasaurus, Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis from the north of Argentina, is described by Osvaldo Reig.

Physics

• David H. Frisch and J. H. Smith prove radioactive decay of mesons is slowed by their motion. (See Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.)

Psychology

• Stanley Milgram publishes the results of his shock experiment on obedience to authority figures.

Technology

• Lava lamp invented by Edward Craven Walker.
• Mellotron Mark I electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard, developed and built in Aston, Birmingham, England, is marketed.

Events

• November 23 – First episode of science fiction television series Doctor Who broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen
  • Chemistry – Karl Ziegler, Giulio Natta
  • Medicine – Sir John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding Huxley

Births

• January 4 – May-Britt Moser, Norwegian neuroscientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• February 9 – Brian Greene, American theoretical physicist.
• February 10 – Vivian Wing-Wah Yam, Hong Kong chemist working on OLEDs.
• W. Tecumseh Fitch, American-born evolutionary biologist.
• Daniel Jackson, English-born American computer scientist.

Deaths

• January 28 – Jean Piccard (born 1884), Swiss-born American chemist and explorer.
• April 6 – Otto Struve (born 1897), Russian astronomer.
• May 19 – Walter Russell (born 1871), American polymath.
• August 30 – Marietta Pallis (born 1882), British ecologist.
• October 13 – Alan A. Griffith (born 1893), English stress engineer.
• October 2 – Olga Lepeshinskaya (born 1871), Soviet Lysenkoist biologist.
• October 25 – Karl von Terzaghi (born 1883), Austrian "father of soil mechanics".