1961 in science

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 31 – Ham, a 37-pound male chimpanzee, is rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury capsule designed to carry U.S. astronauts into space.
• April 12 – Yuri Gagarin is the first human in space, making a single Low Earth orbit in Vostok 1 before parachuting to the ground.
• April 15 – R. N. Schwartz and Charles Hard Townes publish "Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers" in Nature, providing a basis for Optical SETI.
• May 19 – Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first manmade object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus.
• May 25 – Apollo program: President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the moon" before the end of the decade.
• The Drake equation is written by Frank Drake.

  Biochemistry

• Cephalosporin C is first characterized, by Guy Newton and Edward Abraham of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in the University of Oxford.

  Biology

• February 24 – Brattleboro rat strain first born.
• May 15 – J. Heinrich Matthaei performs the Poly-U-Experiment in the United States, opening the way to solution of the genetic code, a key event in modern genetics.
• Hayflick limit proposed by Leonard Hayflick.

  Chemistry

• Leonard Ornstein first describes disc electrophoresis.

  Computer science

• July – Rolf Landauer first formulates Landauer's principle.

  Geophysics

• April – Project Mohole begins.
• Francis Birch establishes Birch's law on compressional wave velocities.

  Mathematics

• Stephen Smale proves the Poincaré conjecture in dimensions greater than 4.

  Medicine

• March 9 – The United Kingdom Minister of Health, Enoch Powell, in his "water towers" speech to a Conservative Party conference, proposes closing down of large, traditional psychiatric hospitals in favour of more community-based care.
• Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is first discovered, in the United Kingdom.
• New Zealand cardiologist J. C. P. Williams identifies Williams syndrome.

  Pharmacology

• The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug Ibuprofen, derived from propanoic acid by the research arm of Boots UK, is patented.
• Thalidomide is withdrawn from sale.

  Physics

• February 14 – Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at Berkeley, California.
• October 30 – The largest nuclear weapon by yield, Tsar Bomba, is detonated in Russia, having a 50-megaton yield.
• Bark scale by German acoustics scientist Eberhard Zwicker.
• Spain joins CERN; Yugoslavia leaves.

  Psychology

• July – First Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures.

  Technology

• June – RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher introduced in the Soviet Union.
• James L. Buie patents transistor-coupled transistor logic, later known as transistor-to-transistor logic circuitry, used in integrated circuits.
• Butler matrix for beamforming first proposed.

  Zoology

• April 3 – A Leadbeater's possum, a marsupial species thought to have been extinct for over 50 years, is discovered in New South Wales.
• April 29 – World Wildlife Fund established.
• November 9 – First edition of new International Code of Zoological Nomenclature published.

  Awards

• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – Robert Hofstadter, Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer
• * Chemistry – Melvin Calvin
• * Medicine – Georg von Békésy

  Births

• February 24 – Ellen Stofan, American planetary scientist.
• March 10 – Laurel Clark, American astronaut.
• July 1 – Kalpana Chawla, Indian astronaut.
• Andreas Weigend, German data scientist.
• Zhang Xu, Chinese neuroscientist.

  Deaths

• January 4
• *Samuel Aggrey, Ghanaian physicist.
• *Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist.
• May 29 – Arnold Gesell, American developmental psychologist.
• June 4 – William Astbury, English physicist and molecular biologist.
• June 6 – Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist.
• July 17 – Abner Doble, American steam engineer.
• September 4 – Emil von Dungern, German serologist.
• November 15 – Johanna Westerdijk, Dutch plant pathologist.
• Sven Sømme, Norwegian ichthyologist and resistance worker.