1968 in science

Astronomy

• Thomas Gold explains the recently discovered radio pulsars as rapidly rotating neutron stars; subsequent observations confirm the suggestion.

  Computer science

• April – First book printed completely using electronic composition, the United States edition of Andrew Garve's thriller The Long Short Cut.
• July 18 – The semiconductor chip company Intel is founded by Gordon E. Moore and Robert Noyce in Mountain View, California.
• December 9 – In what becomes retrospectively known as "The Mother of All Demos", Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center demonstrates for the first time the computer mouse, the video conference, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing, the dynamic linker and a collaborative real-time editor using NLS.

  Mathematics

• Beniamino Segre describes a version of the tennis ball theorem.

  Medicine

• January 2 – Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the second successful human heart transplant, in South Africa, on Philip Blaiberg, who survives for nineteen months.
• November – Outbreak of acute gastroenteritis among schoolchildren in Norwalk, Ohio, caused by "Norwalk agent", the first identified norovirus.
• Publication of a Harvard committee report on irreversible coma establishes a paradigm for defining brain death. France becomes the first European country to adopt brain death as a legal definition of death.
• Doctors perform the first successful bone marrow transplant, to treat severe combined immunodeficiency.
• DiGeorge syndrome is first described by pediatric endocrinologist Angelo DiGeorge.

  Physics

• Georges Charpak develops the multiwire proportional chamber for particle detection at CERN.

  Psychology

• John Darley and Bibb Latané demonstrate the bystander effect.
• Walter Mischel publishes Personality and Assessment.

  Robotics

• January – Miomir Vukobratović proposes Zero Moment Point, a theoretical model to explain biped locomotion.

  Space exploration

• September 15–22 – Zond program: Soviet spacecraft Zond 5 becomes the first vehicle to circle the Moon and return to splashdown on Earth. It also carries the first living organisms to circle the Moon, including two Russian tortoises, Piophila, mealworms, plants and bacteria.
• October 11 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard. Goals for the mission include the first live television broadcast from orbit and testing the lunar module docking maneuver.
• December 24 – Apollo 8 enters Moon orbit. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders are the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole. Anders photographs Earthrise.

  Technology

• June 6 – Roy Jacuzzi is granted a patent for the Jacuzzi whirlpool hot tub in the United States.

  Events

• April 4 – United States theatrical release of Stanley Kubrick's film , based on a story by Arthur C. Clarke.

  Publications

• James D. Watson – The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA.

  Awards

• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – Luis Alvarez
• * Chemistry – Lars Onsager
• * Medicine – Robert W. Holley, Har Gobind Khorana, Marshall W. Nirenberg
• Turing Award – Richard Hamming

  Births

• March 3 – Brian Cox, English physicist and science communicator, previously rock keyboardist
• March 9 – Maggie Aderin-Pocock, English space scientist and science educator
• June 30 – Samantha Tross, Guyanese-born British orthopedic surgeon
• December 11 – Emmanuelle Charpentier, French biochemist

  Deaths

• January 6 – Xu Shunshou, Chinese aeronautical engineer.
• February 22 – May Smith, English experimental psychologist.
• March 27 – Yuri Gagarin, Russian cosmonaut, the first man in space.
• April 1 – Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist.
• July 22 – Muthulakshmi Reddi, Indian physician and social reformer.
• July 28 – Otto Hahn, German chemist who received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• October 27 – Lise Meitner, German physicist, discoverer in 1939, with Otto Hahn, of nuclear fission.