1970 in science

The year 1970 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

 * February 11 – The Ohsumi satellite is launched, making Japan the fourth country to launch a satellite into orbit.
 * March 31 – The Explorer 1 satellite reenters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
 * April 11 – The Apollo 13 space mission is launched.
 * April 17 – Apollo 13 returns safely to Earth.
 * August 17 – Venera 7, the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from another planet, is launched.
 * November 17 – Lunokhod 1, the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, lands on Mare Imbrium on the Moon after being released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.

Biology

 * August – Songs of the Humpback Whale, produced by Roger Payne, is released, publicly demonstrating whale vocalization for the first time and becoming influential in public support for whale conservation.
 * The Parc naturel régional de Camargue is established in the south of France.

Chemistry

 * August – Ulrich K. Laemmli's refinement of the SDS-PAGE method is published.

Computer science

 * January 1 – Unix time begins at 00:00:00 UTC.
 * June – The Datapoint 2200 is announced by the Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC).
 * June–August – The programming language FLOW is devised by Jef Raskin.
 * November 17 – The first United States patent for the computer mouse is issued to Douglas Engelbart.
 * Bomber by Len Deighton, the first novel written on a word processor (the IBM MT/ST), is published in England.
 * The first Pascal compiler is released by Niklaus Wirth.
 * The Xerox PARC computer laboratory is opened in Palo Alto, California.

Earth sciences

 * January 4 – The Tonghai earthquake (7.1 ) occurs in Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, killing an estimated 14,621 and injuring 26,783.
 * May 24 – Drilling on the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins on the Kola Peninsula of Russia.

Mathematics

 * Conway's Game of Life is devised by John Horton Conway.
 * Kurt Gödel's ontological proof of the existence of God is circulated.

Medicine

 * The Dubowitz Score for estimating the gestational age of babies is published by Lilly and Victor Dubowitz.
 * The Exeter hip replacement stem is first implanted at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter, England.
 * The first case of monkeypox in humans is identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Physics

 * The GIM mechanism is predicted by Sheldon Glashow, John Iliopoulos and Luciano Maiani.

Psychology

 * The minimal group paradigm is developed by Henri Tajfel.
 * Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I is published by Konrad Lorenz.

Technology

 * June 2 – The Cleddau Bridge collapses during construction in Wales, killing four and leading to the introduction of new standards for box girder bridges in the United Kingdom.

Events

 * June 19 – The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is signed into international law, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications.

Awards

 * Fields Prize in Mathematics – Alan Baker, Heisuke Hironaka, Sergei Novikov and John Griggs Thompson
 * Nobel Prizes:
 * Physics – Hannes Alfvén, Louis Néel
 * Chemistry – Luis F. Leloir
 * Medicine – Bernard Katz, Ulf von Euler, Julius Axelrod
 * Turing Award – James H. Wilkinson

Births

 * March 27 – Eleanor Maguire, Irish-born neuropsychologist.
 * August 1 – Elon Lindenstrauss, Israeli mathematician.
 * September 3 – Stanislav Smirnov, Russian-born mathematician.

Deaths

 * January 5 – Max Born (b. 1882), German physicist and recipient of the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics.
 * January 27 – Marietta Blau (b. 1894), Austrian physicist.
 * April 27 – Orii Hyōjirō (b. 1883), Japanese animal specimen collector.
 * May 1 – Ralph Hartley (b. 1888), American electrical engineer.
 * July 20 – Margaret Reed Lewis (b. 1881), American cell biologist.
 * July 29 – Emanuel Miller (b. 1892), English child psychiatrist.
 * August 1 – Otto Heinrich Warburg (b. 1883), German physiologist and winner of the 1931 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
 * September 22 – Vojtěch Jarník (b. 1897), Czech mathematician.