1963 in science

• January 1 – Long-period comet C/1963 A1 (Ikeya) is discovered by a Japanese amateur. • January 4 – Soviet Luna reaches Earth orbit but fails to reach the Moon. • May 15 – Mercury program: NASA launches the last mission of the program Mercury 9. (On June 12 NASA Administrator James E. Webb tells Congress the program is complete.) • July 26 – Roy Kerr submits for publication his discovery of the Kerr metric, an exact solution to the Einstein field equation of general relativity, predicting a rotating black hole. • October 18 – Aboard the French Véronique AGI 47 sounding rocket, a bicolor cat designated C 341, later known as Félicette, becomes the first cat in space. • November 1 – The Arecibo Observatory, with the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, officially opens in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. • First definite identification of a radio source, 3C 48, with an optical object, later identified as a quasar, is published by Allan Sandage and Thomas A. Matthews; also Maarten Schmidt publishes significant observations on 3C 273. ==Biology==

• Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone". • Molecular biologist Emile Zuckerkandl and physical chemist Linus Pauling introduce the term paleogenetics. • Konrad Lorenz publishes On Aggression (Das sogenannte Böse: Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression). • Niko Tinbergen poses his four questions to be asked of any animal behavior. • Sydney Brenner proposes the use of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation primarily of neural development in animals. ==Cartography==

• Robinson projection devised by Arthur H. Robinson. ==Computing==

• Ivan Sutherland writes the revolutionary Sketchpad program and runs it on the Lincoln TX-2 computer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ==Earth sciences==

• September 7 – British geophysicists Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews publish proof of seafloor spreading on the Atlantic Ocean floor. • November 14 – The Icelandic volcanic island of Surtsey appears above sea level. ==History of science and technology==

• April 1 – Industrial Monuments Survey for the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Great Britain) commenced by Rex Wailes. • Kenneth Hudson's Industrial Archaeology: an introduction published in London. • Derek J. de Solla Price's Little Science, Big Science published in New York. ==Mathematics==

• Paul Cohen uses forcing to prove that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. • Walter Feit and John G. Thompson state the Feit–Thompson theorem. • Edward Lorenz publishes his discovery of the 'butterfly effect', significant in the development of chaos theory. • Atiyah–Singer index theorem announced by Michael Atiyah and Isadore Singer. ==Medicine==

• June – Guy Alexandre performs the first kidney transplantation from a heart-beating, brain-dead donor, at Saint Pierre Hospital, Leuven, Belgium. • James D. Hardy performs the first lung transplantation. • American endocrinologist Grant Liddle identifies Liddle's syndrome. • French pediatrician Jérôme Lejeune first describes cri du chat syndrome. • Pentasomy X is first diagnosed. ==Paleontology==

• The type species of the early dinosaur Herrerasaurus, Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis from the north of Argentina, is described by Osvaldo Reig. ==Physics==

• David H. Frisch and J. H. Smith prove radioactive decay of mesons is slowed by their motion. (See Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.) ==Psychology==

• Stanley Milgram publishes the results of his shock experiment on obedience to authority figures. • The term "contrafreeloading" was coined. ==Technology==

• Lava lamp invented by Edward Craven Walker. • Mellotron Mark I electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard, developed and built in Aston, Birmingham, England, is marketed. • Don Buchla begins to design an electronic music synthesizer in Berkeley, California. ==Events==

• November 23 – First episode of science fiction television series Doctor Who broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom. ==Awards==

• Nobel Prizes • Physics – Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen • Chemistry – Karl Ziegler, Giulio Natta • Medicine – Sir John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding Huxley ==Births==

• January 4 – May-Britt Moser, Norwegian neuroscientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. • February 9 – Brian Greene, American theoretical physicist. • February 10 – Vivian Wing-Wah Yam, Hong Kong chemist working on OLEDs • March – Jin Li, Chinese geneticist. • August 14 – Saiful Islam, Pakistani-born materials chemist. • August 30 – Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Polish-born developmental biologist. • W. Tecumseh Fitch, American-born evolutionary biologist. • Daniel Jackson, English-born American computer scientist. ==Deaths==

• January 28 – Jean Piccard (born 1884), Swiss-born American chemist and explorer. • February 5 – Barnum Brown (born 1873), American paleontologist. • April 6 – Otto Struve (born 1897), Russian astronomer. • May 11 – Herbert Spencer Gasser (born 1888), American physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. • May 19 – Walter Russell (born 1871), American polymath. • June 16 – Eleanor Williams (born 1884), Australian bacteriologist and serologist. • August 30 – Marietta Pallis (born 1882), British ecologist. • October 13 – Alan A. Griffith (born 1893), English stress engineer. • October 2 – Olga Lepeshinskaya (born 1871), Soviet Lysenkoist biologist. • October 25 – Karl von Terzaghi (born 1883), Austrian "father of soil mechanics". • November 13 – Margaret Murray (born 1863), Indian-English anthropologist and author. ==References==