The 1980s: Science and Technology: People in the News

American Decades | Date: 2001

THE 1980s: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

With a tight budget on research dollars in the late 1980s, large and small science projects had to compete for government funds in a zero-sum game. "Science in the United States is dying of giantism" argued Noble Prize-winning physicist Phillip Anderson in 1988. "Big projects are the worst way to arrive at basic discoveries."

In December 1980, after a five-year study of the mathematical ability of some ten thousand students, psychologists Camilla Persons Benbow and Julian C. Stanley conclude that "Sex differences in achievement in and attitude toward mathematics result from superior male mathematical ability." Critics charge the finding is flawed since environmental factors were not properly screened.

In an experiment in deep-sea diving conducted by physiologist Peter Bennett at Duke University in April 1980, three volunteers, Delmar Shelton, William Bell, and Stephen Porter, worked under pressures equivalent to 2,132 feet underwater—more than 100 feet beyond the deepest simulated dive ever before made—with no symptoms of high-pressure nervous syndrome (HPNS).

In 1987 Paul Chu and colleagues published the recipe for an yttrium-based ceramic that can superconduct at temperatures as high as 92 K (-294°F). Previously even the best superconductors had to be cooled to nearly -400°F.

Martin J. Cline, head of a research team at UCLA, announced in April 1980 that in experiments with mice scientists had successfully transferred genes for the first time into living tissue.

In one of the most intensive investigations of science fraud ever conducted at Harvard, an ad hoc committee in February 1982 reported "serious questions of credibility" in the work of medical researcher Dr. John Darsee.

Fred Gillett of Arizona's Kitt Peak National Observatory and H. H. Aumann of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced in August 1983 the discovery of rocky material orbiting the star Vega, the first evidence of planet formation occurring beyond the solar system. Carl Sagan calls the discovery "an epochal finding in the history of astronomy."

In 1980 Robert K. Graham, a seventy-three-year-old optometrist, said that five Nobel laureates in science, including 1956 cowinner William Shockley, were participating in his experiment to use artificial insemination to produce superior children. "My slogan is, the more intelligent you are, the more children you should have," said Graham.

On 20 January 1987 Peter Hagelstein, the scientist whose work on a nuclear-powered X-ray laser inspired President Ronald Reagan's concept of the Strategic Defense Initiative, returned to work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He had quit the lab to protest weapons research and returned only as a consultant for nonmilitary research.

In October 1988, thirty-two months after the Challenger disaster, Commander Fred Hauck leads a crew of four as the Discovery revives the U.S. manned space program.

At the first American conference on animal cognition, held at Columbia University in June 1982, psychologists report the results of experiments showing that some animals actually form categories, construct intricate mental maps of the world, and follow a process of reasoning that cannot be explained by behavioral conditioning. The experiments of Louis Herman suggest that dolphins are able to understand syntax, not just the meaning of individual words.

In 1983 the International Society of Cryptozoology is formed, a group that is interested in unknown forms of snails as well as reports of the Sasquatch ("Bigfoot"). President Bernard Heuvelmans says the group "aspires to a true skepticism, that which opposes both a priori incredulity and a naive willingness to believe."

Paleontologists digging in Arizona's Painted Desert in summer 1981 found the jawbone of a shrew-size animal 180 million years old. The discovery suggested that in addition to the Morganucodontids, the ancestor of the platypus, and the Kuehneotheriids, which evolved into all other mammals, a third order of mammals existed during the late Triassic period. "This discovery shows us that mammals were more diverse than we thought," said expedition leader Farish Jenkins Jr. of Harvard University.

On a sunny day in July 1981 a solar-powered plane designed by American physicist Paul MacCready flew across the English Channel. "It's actually the most ridiculous use I can think of for solar cells," said MacCready of the plane piloted by Stephen Ptacek . "But we wanted to point out just how much solar power can do."

On 28 January 1986 the Challenger space shuttle exploded barely a minute into its tenth mission, killing six astronauts and teacher Christa McAuliffe.

At the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 1987, astronomers led by Patrick McCarthy of the University of California, Berkeley, report observations of a massive galaxy, some 12 billion light-years distant, discovered in its formation stages.

On 26 July 1989 the Justice Department announced indictments for computer fraud and abuse against Robert Tappan Morris, a Cornell University graduate student believed to be responsible for the release of a computer virus that shut down a nationwide computer network in November 1988.

"Archeological chemistry has come into its own in the last ten years," asserted George Rapp of the University of Minnesota in 1983. For example, Dr. Arthur Aufderheide theorized that subjects too poor to afford pewter dishes and piped water in colonial America can be identified by analyzing the lead concentration of their skeletons.

On 15 April 1987 Nobel laureate Burton Richter- and physicists at Stanford University unveiled the Stanford Linear Collider, a low-cost, high-energy particle accelerator.

In June 1980 J. William Schopf announced in Los Angeles that researchers had confirmed the age of the most ancient living things yet discovered, 3.5-billion-year-old biological cells that were found inside rocks in Western Australia.

Chosen by Western Electric's Lawrence Stern, forty-seven stunning photographs celebrating the color and geometric forms inherent in new microteehnologies were exhibited at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry in October 1983.

In his study of the fossil record of Kenya's Lake Turkana Harvard paleontologist Peter Williamson found support for the new model of evolution called puctuated equilibrium, which holds that species remain the same for long periods until environmental changes spark evolutionary spurts. Williamson writes in November 1981 that his research on mollusk evolution over several millions of years is especially significant since "for the first time we see intermediate forms" between old and new species.

In April 1981 John W. Young and Robert J. Crippen piloted the space shuttle Columbia on its maiden voyage, the first American manned space mission since 1975.

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