1965

Nobel Prize in Physics

Sin-Itiro Tomonaga · Julian Schwinger · Richard P. Feynman

Quantum electrodynamics — the theory of how light and matter interact — had given nonsensical infinite answers in the 1930s. Tomonaga, Schwinger, and Feynman independently found, in the late 1940s, how to subtract those infinities in a principled way, producing a theory whose predictions match experiment to ten decimal places. Feynman's method involved little diagrams that physicists still draw on whiteboards; Schwinger's was so formidable that it is said most people who tried to read his papers gave up before the end.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Robert B. Woodward

Woodward synthesized quinine, cholesterol, cortisone, strychnine, reserpine, chlorophyll, and vitamin B12, among others — complex natural molecules that each required precise assembly of dozens of atoms in exactly the right sequence. He turned organic synthesis from a craft into something closer to architecture.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

François Jacob · André Lwoff · Jacques Monod

Working at the Institut Pasteur, the three scientists discovered the operon — a cluster of genes controlled by a single regulatory switch — and described the mechanism by which bacteria turn genes on and off depending on what nutrients are available. The idea that the genome is not just a parts list but a regulated programme was new; it has not stopped being important.

Nobel Prize in Literature

Mikhail Sholokhov

Sholokhov's four-volume novel And Quiet Flows the Don traced the lives of Don Cossacks from the First World War through the Russian Revolution and civil war — one of the great accounts of a people caught between two kinds of catastrophe, both of which were being done in the name of improvement.

Nobel Peace Prize

United Nations Children's Fund

By 1965, UNICEF operated in over 100 countries providing food, vaccines, and education to children in developing nations — founded in 1946 on the practical theory that the best argument against poverty is a child who grows up not destroyed by it.

Alexei Leonov performs first spacewalk

On 18 March 1965, Alexei Leonov stepped out of Voskhod 2 and spent 12 minutes and 9 seconds in open space — the first human to do so. His spacesuit inflated in the vacuum until he could not fit back through the airlock feet-first; he had to bleed air pressure from the suit at the risk of decompression sickness before squeezing in headfirst. Nobody in mission control mentioned this to the Soviet public at the time.

Mariner 4 returns first close-up images of Mars

On 14 July 1965, Mariner 4 swept past Mars and sent back 22 photographs of the surface — the first close-up images of another planet. They showed craters, not canals; an atmosphere barely 1% as dense as Earth's at sea level; and no obvious signs of life, biology, or anything encouraging. Mars was cold, dry, and thoroughly inhospitable, and the pictures left no room for polite disagreement.

Gemini 4: first American spacewalk

On 3 June 1965, Edward White became the first American to walk in space during Gemini 4, spending about 23 minutes outside the capsule and manoeuvring with a hand-held oxygen jet gun. He later described being ordered back inside as the saddest moment of his life — a feeling most people have experienced in milder forms at closing time.

Death of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Churchill died on 24 January 1965, aged 90. As wartime Prime Minister he had been an early advocate for radar, the atomic bomb programme, and operational research — the systematic application of mathematics to military problems. He also held honorary doctorates from dozens of universities, which is either a tribute to his intellect or a reminder that universities will award a doctorate to almost anyone sufficiently famous.