2002 in science - Definition and Overview

The year 2002 in science and technology involved many events, some of which are included below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• February 19 - NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
• May 26 - The Mars Odyssey finds signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.
• June 4 - Quaoar is discovered
• June 10 - Annular solar eclipse
• December 4 - Total solar eclipse

Biology

• April 18 - New order of insects, Mantophasmatodea, announced.

Geology

• January 17 - Eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.

Mathematics

• August 6 - Polynomial-time primality test published.

Medicine

• December 19 - Clozapine is the first drug approved by the FDA for reducing the risk of suicidal behaviour.

Physics

• Claims regarding bubble fusion, in which a table-top apparatus is reported as producing small-scale fusion in a liquid undergoing acoustic cavitation are published.

Technology

• November 4, A Tactical high energy laser prototype shot down an incoming artillery shell.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Chemistry
    • John B. Fenn (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA) and Koichi Tanaka (Shimadzu Corp., Kyoto, Japan) "for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules"
    • Kurt Wüthrich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA) "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution"
  • Physics
    • Raymond Davis Jr. (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA) and Masatoshi Koshiba (International Center for Elementary Particle Physics, University of Tokyo, Japan) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos"
    • Riccardo Giacconi (Associated Universities Inc., Washington DC, USA) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources"
  • Medicine
    • Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz and John E. Sulston "for their discoveries concerning genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death"
• Turing Award: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Rudolf Trumpy

Births

Deaths

• January 8 - Alexander Prochorow (b. 1916), physicist, Nobellaurette in physics in 1964
• February 6 - Max Perutz (b. 1914), biologist.
• February 10 - Harold Furth (b. 1930), expert in plasma physics and nuclear fusion.
• April 18 - Thor Heyerdahl (b. 1914), explorer, led the Kon-Tiki expedition.
• May 20 - Stephen Jay Gould (b. 1941), paleontologist/evolutionist.
• June 20 - Erwin Chargaff (b. 1905), biochemist.
• June 29 - Ole-Johan Dahl (b. 1931), computer scientist, invented concepts in object-oriented programming.
• July 4 - Laurent Schwartz (b. 1915), mathematician.
• August 6 - Edsger Dijkstra (b. 1930), computer scientist.
• September 21 - Robert Lull Forward (b. 1932), science fiction author and physicist.
• October 18 - Nikolai Rukavishnikov (b. 1932), cosmonaut.
• November 2 - Charles Sheffield (b. 1935), science fiction author and physicist.