1998 in science

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The year 1998 in science and technology involved many events, some of which are included below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January–September – Cosmologists from the Supernova Cosmology Project led by Saul Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team led by Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt publish evidence that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.
• January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon and later finds evidence for frozen water on the moon's surface.
• February 26 – Total solar eclipse
• March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo space probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
• March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket-fuelling station.
• March 13 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• July 5 – Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space-exploring nation.
• August 8 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• August 22 – Annular solar eclipse
• September 6 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• October 29 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts-off with 77-year-old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. He became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
• November 20 – Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station, is launched.
• The first of four 8.4 m reflecting telescopes opens in the Very Large Telescope program of the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal in Chile.

Computer science

• February 10 – XML is published as a recommendation of the W3C.
• June 2 – The CIH virus is discovered in Taiwan.
• September 4 – Google, Inc. is founded in Menlo Park, California, by Stanford University PhD candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin to promote their web search engine.
• November 7 – Sega release the Dreamcast, the first sixth generation home video game console, in Japan.
• The first working 2-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance computer is demonstrated at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Tiger Electronics launch the Furby electronic toy, the first domestic robot.

Geology

• February 4 – An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale in northeast Afghanistan kills more than 5,000.
• March 14 – An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran.
• May 30 – A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits northern Afghanistan killing up to 5,000.
• July 17 – A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 1,500, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.

Mathematics

• Luca Cardelli and Andrew D. Gordon develop ambient calculus.
• Thomas Callister Hales (almost certainly) proves the Kepler conjecture.

Physics

• May 11 & 13 – Nuclear testing: The Pokhran-II: India detonates the five nuclear devices in Pokhran Test Range, an Indian Army base.
• May 28 – Nuclear testing: The Chagai-I: In response to India, Pakistan conducts five underground and simultaneous nuclear weapon-testing experiments in the Chagai Hills, thus becoming the first nuclear weapon state in the Muslim world and the seventh in the world.
• May 30 – Nuclear testing: The Chagai-II: As part of a tit-for-tat policy, a final plutonium implosion test is carried out in the Kharan Desert.
• June 5 – Experimental proof is obtained that neutrinos have mass.

Physiology and medicine

• January 14 – Researchers in Dallas, Texas, present findings about an enzyme that slows aging and cell death (apoptosis).
• February 19 – RNA interference first elucidated in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
• February 28 – Andrew Wakefield publishes a case series (subsequently partially retracted) in The Lancet of twelve children with gastroenterological and autistic spectrum disorders believed to have first presented soon after receipt of the MMR vaccine.
• May – Dr. Friedrich-Wilhelm Mohr performs the first robotically assisted coronary artery bypass surgery, at the Leipzig Heart Centre in Germany using the da Vinci Surgical System; later in the year, Dr. Ralph Damiano performs on 17 patients in Pennsylvania.
• July 17 – Biologists report in the journal Science how they sequenced the genome of the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum.
• September 23 – The world's first medically successful hand transplantation is carried out by a team of surgeons in France.
• December 11
  • Bruce Beutler and colleagues publish their discovery that Toll-like receptor 4 functions as a lipopolysaccharide sensing receptor.
  • The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans becomes the first multicellular organism to have its whole genome sequencing published.

Technology

• April 5 – In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshū, at a cost of about US$3.8 billion, opens to traffic, becoming the longest-span suspension bridge in the world.

Publications

• Jacques Heyman – Structural Analysis: A Historical Approach (Cambridge University Press)

Appointments

• Susan Greenfield appointed Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Richard Ewen Borcherds, William Timothy Gowers, Maxim Kontsevich and Curtis T. McMullen
• Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer, Daniel C. Tsui
  • Chemistry – Walter Kohn, John Pople
  • Medicine – Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro, Ferid Murad
• Turing Award: Jim Gray
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Karl Karekin Turekian

Deaths

• March 15 – Benjamin Spock (b. 1903), American pediatrician.
• March 16 – Sir Derek Barton (b. 1918), English-born organic chemist, Nobel laureate.
• May 9 – R. J. G. Savage (b. 1927), British palaeontologist.
• May 14 – Marjory Stoneman Douglas (b. 1890), American conservationist.
• May 22 – José Enrique Moyal (b. 1910), Jerusalem-born mathematical physicist.
• May 31 – Michio Suzuki (b. 1926), Japanese mathematician.
• July 3 – Danielle Bunten Berry, also known as Dan Bunten (b. 1949), American software developer.
• July 12 – Arkady Ostashev (b. 1925), Soviet Russian engineer and rocket scientist.
• July 14 – Miroslav Holub (b. 1923), Czech immunologist and poet.
• July 21 – Alan Shepard (b. 1923), American astronaut.
• August 4 – Yury Artyukhin (b. 1930), Soviet Russian cosmonaut.
• August 26 – Frederick Reines (b. 1918), American physicist, Nobel laureate.
• October 10 – Konstantin Petrzhak (b. 1907), Soviet Russian physicist.
• October 28 – Tommy Flowers (b. 1905), English computer engineer.
• November 12 – Sally Shlaer (b. 1938), US mathematician and engineer
• December 5 – Hazel Bishop (b. 1906), American cosmetic chemist.
• December 7 – Martin Rodbell (b. 1925), American biochemist and molecular endocrinologist, Nobel laureate.
• December 17 – Claudia Benton (b. c.1959), American pediatric neurologist (murdered).
• December 18 – Lev Dyomin (b. 1926), Soviet Russian cosmonaut.
• December 20 – Sir Alan Hodgkin (b. 1914), English physiologist, Nobel laureate.
• December 28 – Robert Rosen (b. 1934), American theoretical biologist.