1961 in science

The year 1961 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

January 31 – Ham, a 37-pound male chimpanzee, is rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury capsule designed to carry U.S. astronauts into space.
April 12 – Yuri Gagarin is the first human in space, making a single Low Earth orbit in Vostok 1 before parachuting to the ground.
April 15 – R. N. Schwartz and Charles Hard Townes publish "Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers" in Nature, providing a basis for Optical SETI.
May 19 – Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first manmade object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus.
May 25 – Apollo program: President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade.
The Drake equation is written by Frank Drake.

February 24 – Brattleboro rat strain first born.
May 15 – J. Heinrich Matthaei performs the Poly-U-Experiment in the United States, opening the way to solution of the genetic code, a key event in modern genetics.
Hayflick limit proposed by Leonard Hayflick.

March 9 – The United Kingdom Minister of Health, Enoch Powell, in his "water towers" speech to a Conservative Party conference, proposes closing down of large, traditional psychiatric hospitals in favour of more community-based care.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is first discovered, in the United Kingdom.
New Zealand cardiologist J. C. P. Williams identifies Williams syndrome.

February 14 – Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at Berkeley, California.
October 30 – The largest nuclear weapon by yield, Tsar Bomba, is detonated in Russia, having a 50-megaton yield.
Bark scale by German acoustics scientist Eberhard Zwicker.
Spain joins CERN; Yugoslavia leaves.

June – RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher introduced in the Soviet Union.
September 12 – V/STOL aircraft Hawker Siddeley P.1127 makes its first transitions from vertical to horizontal flight and back, using thrust vectoring.
James L. Buie patents transistor-coupled transistor logic, later known as transistor-to-transistor logic circuitry, used in integrated circuits.
Philips publicly introduce the compact audio cassette tape system, developed by a team led by Lou Ottens.
Butler matrix for beamforming first proposed.

April 3 – A Leadbeater's possum, a marsupial species thought to have been extinct for over 50 years, is discovered in New South Wales.
April 29 – World Wildlife Fund established.
November 9 – First edition of new International Code of Zoological Nomenclature published.