Editing 1990 in science

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{{Year nav topic5|1990|science}}
{{Science year nav|1990}}

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

==Astronomy and space exploration==
* January 24 – Japan launches the [[Hiten (spacecraft)|Hiten]] spacecraft, the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.
* 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 24 – The [[Space Shuttle Discovery|Space Shuttle ''Discovery'']] places the [[Hubble Space Telescope]] into orbit.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-31.html|title=STS-31|work=Mission Archives|publisher=[[NASA]]|date=2006-10-14|access-date=2013-01-17}}</ref>
* August 16 – [[Steven Balbus]] makes his first discovery leading to elucidation of [[magnetorotational instability]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Balbus|first1=Steven A.|last2=Hawley|first2=John F.|author-link2=John F. Hawley|year=1991|title=A powerful local shear instability in weakly magnetized disks|journal=[[The Astrophysical Journal]]|volume=376|pages=214–233|bibcode=1991ApJ...376..214B|doi=10.1086/170270}}</ref>
* October 13 – [[Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990]]: A 44 kilogram, 41.5&nbsp;km/s meteoroid passes above Czechoslovakia and Poland at 97.9&nbsp;km. It is the first time calculations of the orbit of such a body based on photographic records from two distant places is made.<ref>{{cite journal|author1=Spurný, P.|author2=Ceplecha, Z.|author3=Borovicka, J.|title=Earth-grazing fireball: Czechoslovakia, Poland, October 13, 1990, 03h27m16sUT|journal=WGN|year=1991 |volume=19|issue=1|page=13|bibcode=1991JIMO...19...13S}} Aphelion of its orbit changed from 2.80 AU to 1.80 AU.</ref>

==Biology==
* The term "[[Rewilding (conservation biology)|rewilding]]" is first used in print.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Trying to Take Back the Planet|first=Jennifer|last=Foote|journal=[[Newsweek]]|date=1990-02-05}}</ref>

==Computer science==
* February – [[Adobe Photoshop]] 1.0 [[graphics software]], devised by [[Thomas Knoll]], is released.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://siliconuser.com/?q=node/10|archive-url=https://archive.today/20070611134528/http://siliconuser.com/?q=node/10|url-status=dead|archive-date=2007-06-11|title=How Adobe's Photoshop Was Born|access-date=2007-06-15|last=Hormby|first=John|date=2007-06-05|work=Story Photography}}</ref>
* May 22 - [[Windows 3.0]] is shipped by [[Microsoft]]
* November 12 – [[Tim Berners-Lee]] publishes a more formal proposal for the [[World Wide Web]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.w3.org/Proposal |first1=T. |last1=Berners-Lee |first2=R. |last2=Cailliau |title=WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project |date=12 November 1990 |access-date=2011-11-29 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121219024023/http://www.w3.org/Proposal |archive-date=2012-12-19 }}</ref>
* November 13 – The first known [[World Wide Web|web]] page is written.<ref>{{cite web|title=Links and Anchors|url=http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/Link.html|access-date=2011-11-29}}</ref>
* Approx. November 22 – [[Satoshi Tajiri]] begins creating the first [[Pokémon]] game.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/magazine/99/1122/pokemon6.fullinterview1.html|title=The Ultimate Game Freak|date=1999-11-22|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|location=Asia|volume=154|issue=20|first=Tim|last=Larimer|access-date=2015-02-02}}</ref>

==History of science==
* [[Thomas W. Laqueur]] publishes ''Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud'' ([[Harvard University Press]]).

==Mathematics==
* [[Alan E. Gelfand]] and [[Adrian Smith (statistician)|Adrian Smith]] publish a paper drawing attention to the significance of the [[Gibbs sampler]] technique for Bayesian [[numerical integration]] problems.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Gelfand|first1=A. E.|last2=Smith|first2=A. F. M.|title=Sampling-Based Approaches to Calculating Marginal Densities|journal=Journal of the American Statistical Association|volume=85|issue=410|pages=398–409|doi=10.2307/2289776|year=1990|jstor=2289776}}</ref>
* [[Victor Kolyvagin]] introduces [[Euler system]]s.<ref>{{citation|last=Kolyvagin|first=V. A.|title=The Grothendieck Festschrift, Vol. '''II'''|publisher=Birkhäuser|location=Boston|series=Progress in Mathematics|isbn=978-0-8176-3428-5|doi=10.1007/978-0-8176-4575-5_11|mr=1106906|year=1990|volume=87|chapter=Euler systems|pages=435–483}}</ref>
* [[Ruth Lawrence]] publishes a paper on [[Homology (mathematics)|homological]] representations of the [[Iwahori–Hecke algebra|Hecke algebra]], introducing, among other things, certain novel linear representations of the [[braid group]], the [[Lawrence–Krammer representation]].<ref>{{cite journal|first=R. J.|last=Lawrence|title=Homological representations of the Hecke algebra|volume=135|year=1990|pages=141–191|journal=[[Communications in Mathematical Physics]]|issue=1 |url=http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?view=body&id=pdf_1&handle=euclid.cmp/1104201923|format=PDF|access-date=2011-11-29|bibcode = 1990CMaPh.135..141L |doi = 10.1007/BF02097660 |s2cid=121644260 }}</ref>

==Paleontology==
* August 12 – "[[Sue (dinosaur)|Sue]]", the best preserved ''[[Tyrannosaurus|Tyrannosaurus rex]]'' specimen ever found, is discovered in [[South Dakota]] by [[Sue Hendrickson]].

==Physiology and medicine==
* June 25 – ''[[Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health]]'' decided in the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] allowing public officials to intervene in questions of termination of life support in the absence of an [[advance healthcare directive]].
* The [[Human Genome Project]] is founded.
* The first evidence for the existence of the [[BRCA gene]] encoding for a DNA repair enzyme involved in breast cancer susceptibility Is provided by [[Mary-Claire King]]'s laboratory at [[University of California, Berkeley]].<ref>{{cite journal|author1=Hall, J. M.|author2=Lee, M. K.|author3=Newman, B.|author4=Morrow, J. E.|author5=Anderson, L. A.|author6=Huey, B.|author7=King, M. C.|title=Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21|journal=[[Science (journal)|Science]]|volume=250|issue=4988|pages=1684–9|date=December 1990|pmid=2270482|doi=10.1126/science.2270482|bibcode=1990Sci...250.1684H}}</ref>

==Psychology==
* [[Roger Shepard]]'s ''Mind Sights'' presents the "[[Shepard tables]]" illusion.<ref>{{cite book|last=Colman|first=Andrew M.|title=A Dictionary of Psychology|year=2009 |url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803110312149?rskey=EtCz6d&result=1|edition=3|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780191726828|quote=The illusion was first presented by the US psychologist Roger N(ewland) Shepard (born 1929) in his book ''Mind Sights: Original Visual Illusions, Ambiguities, and Other Anomalies'' (1990, p. 48), Shepard commented that 'any knowledge or understanding of the illusion we may gain at the intellectual level remains virtually powerless to diminish the magnitude of the illusion' (p. 128).}}</ref>

==Awards==
* [[Fields Medal|Fields Prize in Mathematics]]: [[Vladimir Drinfeld]], [[Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones]], [[Shigefumi Mori]] and [[Edward Witten]]
* [[Nobel Prize]]s
** [[Nobel Prize in Physics|Physics]] – [[Jerome Isaac Friedman]], [[Henry Way Kendall]] and [[Richard E. Taylor]]
** [[Nobel Prize in Chemistry|Chemistry]] – [[Elias James Corey]]
** [[Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine|Medicine]] – [[Joseph E. Murray]] and [[E. Donnall Thomas]]
* [[Turing Award]] – [[Fernando J. Corbató]]

==Births==
* September 28 – [[Nadim Kobeissi]], Lebanese computer science researcher 

==Deaths==
* January 4 – [[Doc Edgerton]], (b. [[1903 in science|1903]]), [[Americans|American]] [[electrical engineer]].
* January 14 – [[Rosalind Pitt-Rivers]] (b. [[1907 in science|1907]]), [[English people|English]] [[biochemist]].
* January 26 – [[Lewis Mumford]] (b. [[1895 in science|1895]]), American historian and philosopher of science.
* February 19 – [[Edris Rice-Wray Carson]] (b. [[1904 in science|1904]]), American-born physician, pioneer in [[family planning]].
* March 20 – [[Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild]] (b. [[1910 in science|1910]]), English [[polymath]].
* March 22 – [[Gerald Bull]] (b. [[1928 in science|1928]]), [[Canadians|Canadian]] engineer.
* March 24 – [[An Wang]] (b. [[1920 in science|1920]]), [[Chinese American]] computer designer.
* May 1 – [[Frits Warmolt Went]] (b. [[1903 in science|1903]]), Dutch-born American botanist.
* May 30 – [[Ora Mendelsohn Rosen]] (b. [[1935 in science|1935]]), American biomedical researcher.
* August 2 – [[François Perrier (psychoanalyst)|François Perrier]] (b. [[1922 in science|1922]]), French psychoanalyst.
* August 18 – [[B. F. Skinner]] (b. [[1904 in science|1904]]), American behavioral [[psychologist]].
* August 30  – [[Bernard D. H. Tellegen]] (b. [[1900 in science|1900]]), Dutch electrical engineer.
* September 2 – [[John Bowlby]] (b. [[1907 in science|1907]]), English [[child psychologist]] and pioneer of [[attachment theory]].
* October 9 – [[Murray Bowen]] (b. [[1913 in science|1913]]), American [[psychiatrist]] and pioneer of [[family therapy]].
* October 17 – [[Hans Freudenthal]] (b. [[1905 in science|1905]]), [[Dutch people|Dutch]] [[mathematician]].
* November 19 – [[Georgy Flyorov]] (b. [[1913 in science|1913]]), Russian physicist.
* November 25 – [[Bettina Warburg]] (b. [[1900 in science|1900]]), German-born American psychiatrist.

==References==
{{Portal|Science|Technology}}
{{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:1990 In Science}}
[[Category:1990 in science| ]]
[[Category:20th century in science]]
[[Category:1990s in science]]