The year1956 inscience andtechnology involved some significant events, listed below.

• March –Denham Harman proposes thefree-radical theory of aging.^[1]
• Wesley K. Whitten reports developing eight-cell mouseova toblastocyst stagein vitro.^[2]

• July 14 – Second part of the publication ofDorothy Hodgkin's description of the structure ofVitamin B₁₂.^[3]

• May –Gilbert Plass publishes his seminal article "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change".^[4]

• July 13 –John McCarthy (Dartmouth),Marvin Minsky (MIT),Claude Shannon (Bell Labs) andNathaniel Rochester (IBM) assemble the first coordinated research meeting on the topic ofartificial intelligence, atDartmouth College,Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States.
• September 13 – Thehard disk drive is invented by anIBM team led byReynold B. Johnson.
• TX-0transistorized computer completed atMIT Lincoln Laboratory in the United States.^[5]

• February 1 –Joseph Kruskal publishesKruskal's algorithm.^[6]
• December –Martin Gardner begins hisMathematical Games column inScientific American.
• Henri Cartan andSamuel Eilenberg publish a text onhomological algebra.^[7]
• Jean-Pierre Serre publishes his "GAGA" paper inalgebraic geometry and analytic geometry.^[8]

• April –Humphry Osmond first proposes use of the wordpsychedelic to describe the effect of certain drugs, at a meeting of theNew York Academy of Sciences.
• May 1 –Minamata disease epidemic is identified inJapan byHajime Hosokawa.
• June 1 –Elsie Stephenson becomes founding Director of theNurse Teaching Unit, University of Edinburgh, the first nurse teaching unit within a British university.
• November – The classic definition ofobesity hypoventilation syndrome is published.^[9]
• Asian flupandemic originates inChina.
• Use ofpenicillamine in treatment ofWilson's disease first described.^[10]
• American voice actorPaul Winchell applies to patent an implantableartificial heart, the first person to do so.^[11]

• November 15 –Cooper pairs are first described byLeon Cooper.^[12]
• November 21 –DIDOheavy waterenriched uraniumnuclear reactor opens at theAtomic Energy Research Establishment,Harwell, Oxfordshire, England.^[13]
• Existence of theantineutrino is experimentally confirmed by theCowan–Reines neutrino experiment carried out byClyde L. Cowan andFrederick Reines.^[14]
• Existence of theantineutron is experimentally confirmed byUniversity of California, BerkeleyphysicistBruce Cork.

• January 1 –Leon Festinger,Henry W. Riecken andStanley Schachter's bookWhen Prophecy Fails provides a classic study ofdisconfirmed expectancy.

• April 14 – 2-inchquadruplex videotape, the first practical and commercially successfulanalog recordingvideotape format, is released for thebroadcast television industry byAmpex ofRedwood City, California.^[15][16]
• April 17 –Eugene Houdry is granted apatent for the automobilecatalytic converter.^[17]
• June 8 –General Electric/Telechron introduces model 7H241 "The Snooz Alarm", first snoozealarm clock.^[18]
• August 27 –Calder Hall nuclear power station inEngland is first connected to theNational Grid. ThisMagnox plant is the world's firstnuclear power plant to deliver electricity in commercial quantities.^[19] Official opening is on October 17.^[20]
• November 11 – First flight ofConvair B-58, the firstsupersonicjetbomber capable ofMach 2 flight,^[21] designed byRobert H. Widmer.
• FirstChamberlin electro-mechanicalkeyboard instrument, developed and patented byWisconsin inventor Harry Chamberlin, is introduced.^[22]

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics –William Bradford Shockley,John Bardeen,Walter Houser Brattain^[23]
  • Chemistry – SirCyril Norman Hinshelwood,Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov
  • Medicine –André Frédéric Cournand,Werner Forssmann,Dickinson W. Richards

• February 28 –Penny Sackett, American-born Australian astronomer and Chief Scientist.
• April 16 –David M. Brown (died2003),Americanastronaut.
• April 19 –Anne Glover,Scottish biologist.
• May 3 –Carlo Rovelli, Italian-born theoretical physicist.
• May 20 –Marlene Zuk, American biologist.
• July 1 –Gregg L. Semenza, American cell biologist, recipient of theNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• July 25 –Frances Arnold, American biochemist, recipient of theNobel Prize in Chemistry.
• September 9 –Avi Wigderson, Israeli-born mathematician.
• October 17 –Mae Jemison, African American engineer and astronaut.
• October 19 –Carlo Urbani (died2003),Italianphysician, discoverer ofSARS.
• December 23 –Simon Wessely,Englishpsychiatrist.
• Zhuo-Hua Pan, Chinese-born neuroscientist

• February 3 –Émile Borel (born1871),Frenchmathematician.
• February 28 –Frigyes Riesz (born1880),Hungarian mathematician.
• March 17 –Irène Joliot-Curie (born1897), Frenchradiochemist, recipient of theNobel Prize in Chemistry.
• March 22 –George Sarton (born1884), Belgian American historian of science.
• May 24 –Martha Annie Whiteley (born1866), English chemist and mathematician.
• August 25 –Alfred Kinsey (born1894),Americanbiologist, professor ofentomology andzoology, andsexologist who founded theInstitute for Sex Research atIndiana University (Bloomington).
• September 22 –Frederick Soddy (born1877),English radiochemist.
• October 30 –María Teresa Ferrari (born1887),Argentinephysician.
• November 10 –Henry Luke Bolley (born1865), Americanplant pathologist.
• November 24 – SirLionel Whitby (born1895), Englishhaematologist,clinical pathologist,pharmacologist and army officer.

• 1956 in science
• 20th century in science
• 1950s in science

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