1954 in science

Astronomy

• November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite crashes through a roof and hits Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio, giving her a bad bruise; the first known modern case of a human being hit by a space rock.

  Biology

• January 10 – Last confirmed specimen of a Caspian tiger is killed, in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet Dag Mountains of Turkmenistan.
• Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.
• Heinz Sielmann makes the pioneering nature documentary about woodpeckers, Zimmerleute des Waldes.
• Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck propose the species name bonobo for what was previously known as the pygmy chimpanzee.

  Chemistry

• Publication of the first analysis of the three-dimensional molecular structure of vitamin B₁₂ by a group including Dorothy Hodgkin, and utilising computer analysis provided by Kenneth Nyitray Trueblood.
• The Wittig reaction is discovered by German chemist Georg Wittig.

  Computer science

• January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.

  Geology

• December 31 – The first specimens of the mineral benstonite are collected by Orlando J. Benston in the Magnet Cove igneous complex of Arkansas.

  History of science

• Joseph Needham begins publication of Science and Civilisation in China.
• A History of Technology, edited by Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard and A. R. Hall, begins publication.

  Mathematics

• Klaus Roth publishes a paper laying the foundations for modern discrepancy theory.
• Leonard Jimmie Savage publishes Foundations of Statistics, promoting Bayesian statistics.

  Medicine

• February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris.
• * December 23 – Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston carries out the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins.
• The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine and Largactil
• The sucrose gap is introduced by Robert Stämpfli for the reliable measurement of action potential in nerve fibers.

  Metrology

• 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures proposes the six original SI base units.
• Alexander Macmillan publishes the "Macmillan correction" to account for errors in the calculation of velocity of an object moving along a gradient due to viscous effects and wall proximity.

  Physics

• January 2 – Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany at Imperial College London report achieving low-loss light transmission through a 75 cm long optical fiber bundle.
• March 1 – United States carries out a hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
• September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.

  Psychology

• Summer – Robbers Cave Experiment carried out by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif.
• Man Meets Dog is published by Konrad Lorenz.

  Technology

• June 26 – Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the first civilian nuclear power station, is commissioned in the Soviet Union.
• June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.
• September 30 – The submarine, the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy.
• October 18 – Texas Instruments announces development of the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, manufactured in Indianapolis; it goes on sale the following month.
• December 16 – The first synthetic diamond is produced.
• New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine capable of propelling a jetboat.
• The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.
• Staley T. McBrayer invents the Vanguard web offset press for newspaper printing in Fort Worth, Texas.
• The Angle grinder is invented by German company Ackermann + Schmitt.

  Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Kunihiko Kodaira and Jean-Pierre Serre, the latter being the youngest-ever winner, at age 27
• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – Max Born and Walther Bothe
• * Chemistry – Linus Pauling
• * Medicine – John Franklin Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins

  Births

• February 9 – Kevin Warwick, English scientist, author of March of the Machines.
• May 14 – Peter J. Ratcliffe, English cellular biologist, Nobel Medicine laureate, 2019.
• June 20 – Ilan Ramon, Israeli astronaut.
• July 17 – Angela Kasner, German physical chemist and Chancellor.
• August 28 – George M. Church, American geneticist, molecular engineer and chemist.
• September 5 – Myeong-Hee Yu, South Korean microbiologist.
• November 1 – Graham Colditz, Australian-born epidemiologist.
• November 7 – Vijay Kumar, Indian molecular biologist.
• Pat Hanrahan, American computer scientist.

  Deaths

• January 17 – Leonard Eugene Dickson, American mathematician.
• March 7
• * Otto Diels, German Nobel Chemistry laureate, 1950.
• * Ludwik Hirszfeld, Polish microbiologist and serologist.
• April 10 – Auguste Lumière, French inventor, film pioneer.
• April 21 – Emil Post, American mathematician and logician.
• June 7 – Alan Turing, English mathematician and computer scientist.
• July 11 – Henry Valentine Knaggs, English practitioner of naturopathic medicine.
• October 3 – Vera Fedorovna Gaze, Soviet Russian astronomer.
• October 8 – Dimitrie Pompeiu, Romanian mathematician.
• November 29 – Enrico Fermi, Italian American physicist.