The year1953 involved numerous significant events inscience andtechnology, including the first description of theDNAdouble helix, the discovery ofneutrinos, and the release of the firstpoliovaccine.

• February 15 –Linus Pauling proposes a DNA triple helix structure,^[1] which is rapidly shown to be incorrect.

• February 28 – Francis Crick and James Watson enterThe Eagle, Cambridge, for a pub lunch announcing "We have discovered the secret of life."^[2]
• April 25 –Francis Crick andJames D. Watson of the U.K.Medical Research Council's Unit for Research on the Molecular Structure of Biological Systems at theCavendish Laboratory in theUniversity of Cambridge publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" in the British journalNature.^[3] Their work is often ranked as one of the most dramatic biological discoveries of the 20th century, because of the structural beauty and functional logic of theDNA double helix.^[4] In 1962, they will share theNobel Prize in Medicine withMaurice Wilkins, who publishesX-ray crystallography results for DNA in the same issue ofNature in 1953.^[5] The third related article published at the same time is byRosalind Franklin andRaymond Gosling, on "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate".^[6][7]

• May 15 –Stanley Miller publishes results from theMiller–Urey experiment in the journalScience. These surprise many chemists, by showing that organic molecules present in living organisms can form easily from simple inorganic chemicals.^[8]
• Rudolph Pariser,Robert G. Parr andJohn Pople publish their computationalquantum chemistry theory for approximatingmolecular orbitals.^[9][10]
• Ziegler–Natta catalyst invented byKarl Ziegler andGiulio Natta.^[11]

• October –UNIVAC 1103 launched.
• Tom Kilburn at theUniversity of Manchester completes a device called MEG, which performsfloating-point calculations. This machine evolves into the firsttransistorized computer, theMetro-Vickers MV950, ultimately leading to the mass production of computers.
• Alan Turing publishes an article describing the first 1,104 zeroes of theRiemann zeta-function, the culmination of fifteen years of work on how to use computers to tackle a fundamental problem in number theory.^[12]

• Maurice Ewing andBruce Heezen discover the deep canyon running along the center of theMid-Atlantic Ridge, an important contribution to the theory ofplate tectonics.^[13]

• Klaus Roth publishes a theorem regarded as a milestone inarithmetic combinatorics.^[14][15]

• February 13 –Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known Americantranssexual, returns to New York after successfulsexual reassignment surgery in Denmark.
• March 26 –Jonas Salk announces hispoliovaccine.
• May 6 – The first successfulopen heart surgery on a human utilizing acardiopulmonary bypass pump ("heart-lung machine") is performed byJohn Gibbon atThomas Jefferson University Hospital inPhiladelphia when he repairs anatrial septal defect in 18-year-old Cecilia Bavolek.^[16][17]
• July 11 –Andrew Watt Kay publishes his augmentedhistamine test.^[18]
• August 18 – The second of the controversialKinsey Reports on human sexuality,Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, is published in the United States.
• September 1 – AmericanneurosurgeonWilliam Beecher Scoville performs an experimentalsegmental resection onHenry Molaison ("H.M.") atHartford Hospital (Connecticut) in an attempt to control his severeepilepsy, involving removal of most of H.M.'s medialtemporal lobes on both hemispheres including thehippocampi,amygdalae andentorhinal cortex (the major sensory input to the hippocampi), and rendering him a continuing subject for the study ofmemory formation andcognitive neuropsychology.^[19]
• September 4 – The discovery ofREM sleep is first published by researchersEugene Aserinsky andNathaniel Kleitman of theUniversity of Chicago.^[20]
• American scientistWinston Price isolates the firstrhinovirus, the most prevalent cause of thecommon cold.^[21]
• Cincinnatipsychiatrist Max Lurie and Harry Salzer coin the termantidepressant.^[22]
• B. F. Skinner publishes the bookScience and Human Behavior,^[23] a controversial attempt to apply the results ofbehavioral studies of laboratory animals to human psychology.

• 20 November – Authorities at theNatural History Museum in London announce that theskull ofPiltdown Man (allegedly anearly human discovered in1912) is a hoax.^{[24][25][26][27]}

• Frederick Reines andClyde Cowan perform the firstneutrino detection experiments, constructing the first neutrino detector (acadmium-water target) and using theHanford Site nuclear facility inWashington state as the neutrino source.^[28] This work, first discussed withEnrico Fermi and others in 1951–2, leads to the 1995Nobel Prize in Physics.
• Enrico Fermi,John Pasta,Stanislaw Ulam, andMary Tsingou conduct computer simulations of a vibrating string that included a non-linear term in what became known as theFermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou experiment.
• Charles Kittel publishes his influential textbookIntroduction to Solid State Physics in the United States.

• September 16 – Epic filmThe Robe is released in the United States as the firstwidescreenanamorphic format movie, filmed inCinemaScope.
• December 17 – TheNTSCcolor television standard is agreed for the United States.
• J. C. Bamford of England introduce thebackhoe loader.
• TheJet Propulsion Laboratory completes development of the SSM-A-17 Corporal I rocket. This is the first American surface-to-surfaceballistic missile, powered by a liquid-fuelled motor utilizingnitric acid as theoxidizer.

• January 13 – "Doctors' plot": The state newspaperPravda publishes an article alleging that many of the Soviet Union's top doctors are part of a major plot to poison the country's senior political and military leaders.^[29]
• February 16 – ThePakistan Academy of Sciences is established.
• October 9 – As part of an extended series of publications on science,Pope Pius XII publishes "The Technician", which instructs scientists to restrict themselves to the study of physicalmatter and do nothing to undermine the idea of a non-materialsoul or aSuperior Being. "The Technician" is delivered as a papal address on October 9.
• Rudolf Carnap publishes an article called "Testability and Meaning" inReadings in the Philosophy of Science, which moves away from the philosophical position oflogical positivism with respect to science (particularly the heavily mathematical sciences, such as physics). Carnap instead emphasizes the idea that progress in science depends on the gradual accumulation of many small results that support human understanding of the world, a view more in line withLudwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the biological sciences.

• 1953Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine:Hans Adolf Krebs andFritz Albert Lipmann
• 1953Nobel Prize in Physics:Frits Zernike
• 1953Nobel Prize in Chemistry:Hermann Staudinger

• January 2 –Vincent Racaniello, Americanvirologist.
• January 17 –Ingeborg Hochmair (née Desoyer),Austrianelectrical engineer.
• January 21 –Paul Allen, American entrepreneur, co-founder ofMicrosoft (d.2018).
• January 25 –Mark Walport, Englishmedical scientist andGovernment Chief Scientific Adviser (United Kingdom).
• May 14 –Martin Page, Englishbotanist.
• May 15 –Athene Donald (née Griffith), Englishexperimental physicist.
• May 17 –Maria Petrou, Anglo-Greekartificial intelligence researcher (d.2012).^[30]
• May 18 –David Deutsch,Israeli-bornquantum physicist.
• August 16 –David Spiegelhalter, Englishstatistician.
• December 1 –Victor Ambros, Americandevelopmental biologist, recipient of theNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Debra Fischer, American astronomer
• Pat Nuttall, British virologist andacarologist.

• January 16 –Solomon Carter Fuller,African Americanpsychiatrist (b.1872).
• February 25 –Sergei Winogradsky, Russianmicrobiologist (b.1856).
• April 17 –Sven Gustaf Wingqvist,Swedishengineer,inventor andindustrialist (b.1876).
• April 22 –Jan Czochralski,Polish–German discoverer of theCzochralski process for growingcrystals (b.1885).
• August 15 –Ludwig Prandtl, Germanphysicist (b.1875).
• September 28 –Edwin Hubble, Americanastronomer (b.1889).
• September 30 –Lewis Fry Richardson, English mathematical physicist (b.1881).
• October 30 –Alice Eastwood,Canadian American botanist (b.1859).
• November 13 –Herbert E. Ives, Americanoptical engineer (b.1882).

• List of years in science
• 1953 in spaceflight

• 1953 in science
• 20th century in science
• 1950s in science

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