1948 in science

Astronomy and space science

• February 16 – Miranda, innermost of the large moons of Uranus, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper from the McDonald Observatory in Texas.
• October 10 – An R-1 (missile) on test becomes the first Soviet launch to enter space.

Biology

• August 7 – Teaching and research in Mendelian genetics is prohibited in the Soviet Union in favour of Lysenkoist theories of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
• October 5 – Delegates to a conference organised by Sir Julian Huxley at Fontainebleau agree to formation of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
• November 20 – The South Island takahē, a flightless bird generally thought to have been extinct for fifty years, is rediscovered by Geoffrey Orbell near Lake Te Anau in the South Island of New Zealand.
• Last recorded sighting of the Caspian tiger in Kazakhstan.
• Publication of Fairfield Osborne's Our Plundered Planet, a Malthusian critique of human environmental destruction.

Computer science

• May 12 – World's first stored-program computer operates, the mechanical ARC at Birkbeck College, University of London.
• June 21 – World's first working program run on an electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby.
• July–October – Claude E. Shannon publishes "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in Bell System Technical Journal, regarded as a foundation of information theory, introducing the concept of Shannon entropy and adopting the term Bit.

History of science and technology

• December 17 – The original Wright Flyer goes on display in the Smithsonian Institution.

Mathematics

• May – The Descartes snark in graph theory is described by Bill Tutte writing as Blanche Descartes.

Medicine and human sciences

• January 5 – The first Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, is published in the United States.
• April 7 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
• July 5 – The National Health Service begins functioning in the United Kingdom, giving the right to universal healthcare, free at point of use.
• Winter 1948/49 – Outbreak of Akureyri disease in Iceland.
• In psychology, Bertram Forer demonstrates the Barnum effect.
• Julius Axelrod and Bernard Brodie identify the analgesic properties of acetaminophen.

Meteorology

• March 25 – Meteorologists at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City issue the world's first tornado forecast, for the second of the 1948 Tinker Air Force Base tornadoes.

Physics

• April 1 – Physicists Ralph Asher Alpher and George Gamow publish the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper about the Big Bang.
• May 29 – Casimir effect predicted by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir.
• Herbert Fröhlich makes a key breakthrough in understanding superconductivity, at the University of Liverpool.

Technology

• June 18 – Columbia Records unveil the LP records developed by Peter Goldmark of CBS Laboratories.
• First modern long-span permanent box girder bridge completed, between Cologne and Deutz.

Publications

• First publication of Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
• Publication in Britain of the novel No Highway by former aeronautical engineer Nevil Shute, dealing with the effects of metal fatigue on aircraft.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
• * Chemistry – Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius
• * Medicine – Paul Hermann Müller

Births

• January 30 – Akira Yoshino, Japanese chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• March 1 – Alison Richard, English primatologist and academic.
• March 9 – László Lovász, Hungarian computer scientist.
• March 21 – Robert Watson, British atmospheric chemist.
• May – David Mabberley, English-born plant taxonomist.
• June 13 – Nina L. Etkin, American anthropologist and biologist.
• June 28 – Kenneth Alan Ribet, American mathematician.
• July 20 – Martin Green, Australian solar cell researcher.
• August 4 – Giorgio Parisi, Italian theoretical physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• August 7 – James P. Allison, American immunologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• August 25 – Nicholas A. Peppas, Greek chemical and biomedical engineer.
• August 29 – Robert S. Langer, American biomedical engineer.
• August 30 – Victor Skumin, Russian scientist, psychiatrist and psychologist; describes Skumin syndrome in 1978.
• September 2 – Christa McAuliffe, born Sharon Christa Corrigan, American astronaut.
• October 29 – Frans de Waal, Dutch primatologist.
• October 31 – Mu-ming Poo, Chinese neuroscientist.
• December 30 – Randy Schekman, American cell biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Margaret Allen, American cardiothoracic surgeon.
• Robert Plomin, American-born psychologist.

Deaths

• January 30 – Orville Wright, American pioneer aviator.
• May 26 – Sir George Newman, English public health physician.
• June 10 – Philippa Fawcett, English mathematician.
• June 21 – D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Scottish biologist.
• December 12 – Marjory Stephenson, English biochemist.