1959

Nobel Prize in Physics

Emilio Segrè · Owen Chamberlain

Four years after the discovery of the antiproton at the Bevatron, the Nobel committee caught up. Segrè and Chamberlain had confirmed in 1955 the existence of the antimatter counterpart of the proton, directly verifying a prediction Dirac had made in 1931 from pure theory — the kind of result that makes a physicist feel the universe is, at bottom, cooperating.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Jaroslav Heyrovsky

Heyrovsky invented polarography in 1922: apply a voltage to a solution, measure the current, and read off what ions are present and in what concentration. It became a fundamental tool in analytical chemistry, quiet and useful in the way that fundamental tools tend to be, and Heyrovsky had spent thirty-seven years refining it before the prize arrived.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Severo Ochoa · Arthur Kornberg

Ochoa isolated an enzyme that could synthesise RNA in vitro; Kornberg discovered DNA polymerase I, which replicates DNA. Together they had found the molecular machines responsible for copying both kinds of nucleic acid — the photocopiers, so to speak, of the cell's genetic archive, working away continuously in every dividing cell in your body.

Nobel Prize in Literature

Salvatore Quasimodo

The Italian poet Quasimodo had been a leader of the Hermetic movement before the war, writing private, allusive verse that kept the outside world at arm's length. After 1945 his poems turned outward, responding to the destruction and the need to rebuild — a transition the Nobel committee described as poetry that "with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times."

Nobel Peace Prize

Philip Noel-Baker

Noel-Baker had been arguing for disarmament since the 1920s, through the League of Nations and then the United Nations, as an Olympic athlete (he had won silver in the 1920 1500m), and eventually as a British cabinet minister. Five decades of consistent effort on a problem that did not get easier is, on reflection, a reasonable criterion for the prize.

Invention of the MOSFET transistor at Bell Labs

Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng demonstrated the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor in November, showing that a thin layer of silicon dioxide could stabilise the silicon surface well enough to make a reliable switching device. The MOSFET became the fundamental building block of integrated circuits; it is now the most manufactured device in human history, produced by the trillion.

Feynman's "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" lecture anticipates nanotechnology

On 29 December, Richard Feynman delivered a lecture at Caltech in which he asked, with the air of someone pointing at something others had simply not noticed, whether there was any physical reason why one could not arrange individual atoms. He envisioned nanoscale machines, atomic-precision manufacturing, and information stored at molecular scale — none of it yet possible, all of it within the laws of physics. The talk is widely cited as the conceptual origin of nanotechnology.

Luna 1 escapes Earth's gravity — first heliocentric object

Launched on 2 January, Luna 1 was aimed at the Moon and missed by about 5,900 kilometres — which, at that stage of the space program, counted as a significant achievement. Entering heliocentric orbit, it became the first human-made object to escape Earth's gravity, and made the first direct measurements of the solar wind streaming through interplanetary space.

Luna 2 impacts the Moon — first contact with another celestial body

On 14 September, Luna 2 struck the lunar surface near the Sea of Serenity, becoming the first human-made object to touch another world. The probe confirmed that the Moon has no significant magnetic field and took measurements of the solar wind outside Earth's magnetosphere — small data points, significant address.

Luna 3 returns first images of the Moon's far side

Launched on 4 October, Luna 3 curved around the Moon and photographed roughly 70% of its far hemisphere during a 40-minute imaging session on 7 October. The photographs, transmitted back across 470,000 kilometres, showed a surface dramatically different from the near side: no dark basaltic plains, just cratered highlands. Humans had been looking at the Moon for all of history; here was the half they had never seen.

Leakeys discover Paranthropus boisei at Olduvai Gorge

On 17 July, Mary Leakey found a fossil cranium at Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika, dated to approximately 1.75 million years ago: Paranthropus boisei, initially called Zinjanthropus, a previously unknown hominin with a large brow ridge and enormous molars adapted for grinding hard food. It was one of the most complete early hominin skulls yet found, and it pushed the known antiquity of our cousins in East Africa considerably further back.