1996 in science

The year 1996 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

* January 30 - Comet Hyakutake was discovered.
* February 17 - NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft launched. The spacecraft landed on the asteroid 433 Eros in 2001.
* May 20 - First naked eye observation of Comet Hale-Bopp.
* November 7 - NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.
* The second 9.8 m reflecting telescope opens at Keck Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Biology

* July 5 - Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, is born.
* August 6 - NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
*The yeast "Saccharomyces cerevisiae's" genome is sequenced, it is the first eukaryotic genome to be fully sequenced.

Computer science

* January 23 - The first version of the Java programming language is released.
* February 10 - Deep Blue defeats chess grand-master Garry Kasparov for the first time.
* Lov Grover, at Bell Labs, published the quantum database search algorithm.
* IRCNet is founded.

Exploration

* May 23 - Swede Göran Kropp reaches Mount Everest summit alone without oxygen after having bicycled there from Sweden.

Meteorology

* January 7 - A large blizzard hits the Eastern United States, killing more than 100.
* May 13 - Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh kills 600.
* July 18 - 21 - Storms provoke severe flooding on the Saguenay River in Quebec, in one of Canada's most costly natural disasters.

Technology

* Zenith introduces the first HDTV-compatible front projection TV in the United States. Broadcasters, TV & PC manufacturers set industry standards for digital HDTV.
* APS film format is introduced.
* Successful demonstration of magnetic refrigeration.

Awards

* Nobel Prize
** Physics: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff, Robert C. Richardson
** Chemistry: Robert Curl, Sir Harold Kroto, Richard Smalley
** Medicine: Peter C. Doherty, Rolf M. Zinkernagel
*Turing Award for Computing: Amir Pnueli
*Wollaston Medal for Geology: Nicholas John Shackleton

Births

* July 5 - Dolly the sheep (d. 2003), the world's first cloned mammal.

Deaths

* January 12 - Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (b. 1903), mathematician.
* March 26 - David Packard (b. 1912), engineer.
* June 17 - Thomas Kuhn (b. 1922), philosopher of science.
* August 1 - Tadeus Reichstein (b. 1897), Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
* September 20 - Paul Erdős (b. 1913), mathematician.
* December 20 - Carl Sagan (b. 1934), astronomer.