The year 1990 in science and technology involved
some significant events.
== Astronomy and space exploration ==
January 24 – Japan launches the Hiten spacecraft,
the first lunar probe launched by a country
other than the Soviet Union or the United
States.
February 14 – The Pale Blue Dot photograph
of Earth is sent back from the Voyager 1 probe
after completing its primary mission, from
around 3.5 billion miles away.
April 23 – Gamma ray burst GRB 090423 is
detected, coming from the most distant known
astronomical object of any kind at this time.
April 24 – The Space Shuttle Discovery places
the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.
October 13 – Earth-grazing meteoroid of
13 October 1990: A 44 kilogram, 41.5 km/s
meteoroid passes above Czechoslovakia and
Poland at 97.9 km.
It is the first time calculations of the orbit
of such a body based on photographic records
from two distant places is made.
== Biology ==
The term "rewilding" is first used in print.
== Computer science ==
February – Adobe Photoshop 1.0 graphics
software, devised by Thomas Knoll, is released.
May 22 - Windows 3.0 is shipped by Microsoft
November 12 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes
a more formal proposal for the World Wide
Web.
November 13 – The first known web page is
written.
Approx.
November 22 – Satoshi Tajiri begins creating
the first Pokémon game.
== History of science ==
Thomas W. Laqueur publishes Making Sex: Body
and Gender From the Greeks to Freud (Harvard
University Press).
== Mathematics ==
Victor Kolyvagin introduces Euler systems.
Ruth Lawrence publishes a paper on homological
representations of the Hecke algebra, introducing,
among other things, certain novel linear representations
of the braid group, the Lawrence–Krammer
representation.
== Paleontology ==
August 12 – "Sue", the best preserved Tyrannosaurus
rex specimen ever found, is discovered in
South Dakota by Sue Hendrickson.
== Physiology and medicine ==
June 25 – Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department
of Health decided in the Supreme Court of
the United States allowing public officials
to intervene in questions of termination of
life support in the absence of an advance
healthcare directive.
The Human Genome Project is founded.
The first evidence for the existence of the
BRCA gene encoding for a DNA repair enzyme
involved in breast cancer susceptibility Is
provided by Mary-Claire King's laboratory
at University of California, Berkeley.
== Psychology ==
Roger Shepard's Mind Sights presents the "Shepard
tables" illusion.
== Awards ==
Fields Prize in Mathematics: Vladimir Drinfeld,
Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones, Shigefumi
Mori and Edward Witten
Nobel Prizes
Physics – Jerome Isaac Friedman, Henry Way
Kendall and Richard E. Taylor
Chemistry – Elias James Corey
Medicine – Joseph E. Murray and E. Donnall
Thomas
Turing Award – Fernando J. Corbató
== Deaths ==
January 4 – Prof. Doc Edgerton, (b. 1903),
American electrical engineer.
January 14 – Rosalind Pitt-Rivers (b. 1907),
English biochemist.
January 26 – Lewis Mumford (b. 1895), American
historian and philosopher of science.
February 19 – Edris Rice-Wray Carson (b.
1904), American-born physician, pioneer in
family planning.
March 20 – Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron
Rothschild (b. 1910), English polymath.
March 22 – Gerald Bull (b. 1928), Canadian
engineer.
March 24 – An Wang (b. 1920), Chinese American
computer designer.
May 30 – Ora Mendelsohn Rosen (b. 1935),
American biomedical researcher.
September 2 – John Bowlby (b. 1907), English
child psychologist and pioneer of attachment
theory.
October 9 – Murray Bowen (b. 1913), American
psychiatrist and pioneer of family therapy.
October 17 – Hans Freudenthal (b. 1905),
Dutch mathematician.
November 19 – Georgy Flyorov (b. 1913),
Russian physicist known for his discovery
of the spontaneous fission
