1994 in science

The year 1994 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

* July 16 – July 22 – The fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact the planet Jupiter
* July 21 R. Ibata, M. Irwin, and G. Gilmore discover the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It was considered the closest galaxy to the Milky Way from its discovery until 2003. [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?1994Natur.370..194I]
* October 12 – NASA lost contact with the Magellan spacecraft after a successful mission. The probe crashed into Venus shortly after.
* Asteroid 7484 Dogo Onsesn is discovered by Masahiro Koishikawa.
* 14032 Mego is discovered.

Archaeology

* March 31 – The journal "Nature" reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete "Australopithecus afarensis" skull (see Human evolution).

Molecular biology

* Green fluorescent protein was successfully expressed in "C. elegans", starting its career as a fluorescent marker.

Technology

* May 6 – The Channel Tunnel, which took 15,000 workers over seven years to complete, opens between England and France. Travelers can now travel between the two countries in 35 minutes.

Awards

*Fields Prize in Mathematics: Efim Isakovich Zelmanov, Pierre-Louis Lions, Jean Bourgain and Jean-Christophe Yoccoz
* Nobel Prizes
** Physics – Bertram N. Brockhouse, Clifford G. Shull
** Chemistry – George A. Olah
** Medicine – Alfred G. Gilman, Martin Rodbell
* Turing Award – Edward Feigenbaum, Raj Reddy
* Wollaston Medal for Geology – William Jason Morgan

Births

Deaths

* January 25 – Stephen Cole Kleene (b. 1909), mathematician.
* July 29 – Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (b. 1910), chemist.
* August 19 – Linus Pauling (b. 1901), American chemist.