1972 in science

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 5 – President of the United States Richard Nixon orders the development of a Space Shuttle program.
• February 4 – Mariner 9 sends pictures from Mars.
• February 21 – The Soviet uncrewed spacecraft Luna 20 lands on the Moon.
• March 2 – Launch of Pioneer 10 spacecraft.
• April 16 – Apollo 16 launched.
• June 30 – The International Time Bureau adds the first leap second to Coordinated Universal Time.
• July 23 – The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.
• December 7 – Apollo 17 launched with three astronauts and five mice, and The Blue Marble photograph of the Earth is taken.
• December 11 – NASA astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt land on the Moon and begin a three-day exploration.

Biology

• February - S. J. Singer and Garth L. Nicolson describe the fluid mosaic model of the functional cell membrane.
• September - Geoffrey Burnstock proposes the existence of a non-adrenergic, non-cholinergic neurotransmitter, which he identifies as adenosine triphosphate, originating the term 'purinergic signalling'.
• October 1 - The first publication reporting the production of a recombinant DNA molecule, by Paul Berg and colleagues, marks the birth of modern molecular biology methodology.
• Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould publish their landmark paper on punctuated equilibrium.
• Socorro doves last seen in the wild. The species precariously survives in captivity. A reintroduction program is being prepared.

Computer science

• April 6 – Cray Research founded.
• May – Magnavox release the first home video game console which can be connected to a television set – the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph H. Baer.
• July 12 – First C compiler released.
• October – The First International Conference on Computer Communications is held in Washington, D.C., and hosts the first public demonstration of ARPAnet, a precursor of the Internet.
• November 29 – Atari release the production version of Pong, one of the first video games, devised by Nolan Bushnell and Allan Alcorn.
• Karen Spärck Jones introduces the concept of inverse document frequency weighting in information retrieval.
• Write-only memory is devised as a joke in Signetics.

Earth sciences

• February 8 – First Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point defined at the Silurian-Devonian boundary at Klonk in the Czech Republic.

Ecology

• January – A Blueprint for Survival first published as a special edition of The Ecologist magazine in the United Kingdom.
• James Lovelock first refers to the Gaia hypothesis in print.
• The Climatic Research Unit is founded by climatologist Hubert Lamb at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Mathematics

• Daniel Quillen formulates higher algebraic K-theory.
• Daniel Gorenstein announces a 16-step program for completing the classification of finite simple groups.
• Richard M. Karp shows that the Hamiltonian cycle problem is NP-complete.

Medicine

• January 31 – Immunosuppressive effect of ciclosporin discovered by a team at Sandoz, Basel, under Hartmann F. Stähelin.
• Harvey J. Alter identifies the presence of hepatitis C virus.
• Tu Youyou and collaborators obtain a pure extract of the antiplasmodial drug artemisinin.
• Archie Cochrane publishes Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services in the U.K.
• John Yudkin publishes Pure, White and Deadly in the U.K., warning of the dangers of sucrose in diet.
• The last major epidemic of smallpox in Europe breaks out in Yugoslavia.

Metrology

• 00:00:00 UTC matches 00:00:10 TAI exactly and the tick rate of UTC is changed to match TAI exactly.

Paleontology

• Kielan-Jawarowska and Rinchen Barsbold report the associated remains of a Velociraptor and Protoceratops apparently killed and preserved while fighting.

Psychology

• Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky begin to publish together on cognitive bias and heuristics in judgment and decision-making.

Technology

• February 1 – The first scientific hand-held calculator is introduced, at a price of $395.00.
• July 10 – Jack Cover files for the original form of Taser electroshock weapon.
• English inventor Peter Powell develops a steerable dual-line kite.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer
• * Chemistry – Christian B. Anfinsen, Stanford Moore, William H. Stein
• * Medicine – Gerald Edelman, Rodney R Porter
• Turing Award – Edsger Dijkstra

Births

• March 31 – Evan Williams, American Internet entrepreneur.
• April 5 – Nima Arkani-Hamed, Canadian-American theoretical physicist.
• June 21 – Warren Lyford DeLano, American bioinformatician and open source advocate.
• unknown date – Kathy Vivas, Venezuelan astrophysicist

Deaths

• February 20 – Maria Goeppert Mayer, German-American theoretical physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• May 4 – Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• May 8 – Beatrice Helen Worsley, Canadian computer scientist.
• August 11 – Max Theiler, South African-born American virologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• August 22 – Ștefan Procopiu, Romanian physicist.
• August 25 – Lucien Bull, Irish-born French pioneer in chronophotography.
• October 1 – Louis Leakey, British paleoanthropologist.
• November 25 – Henri Coandă, Romanian aeronautical engineer.