1974 in science

The year 1974 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

February 8 – After 84 days in space, the last crew of the temporary American space station Skylab return to Earth.
February 13–15 – Sagittarius A*, thought to be the location of a supermassive black hole, is identified by Bruce Balick and Robert Brown using the baseline interferometer of the United States National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
November 16 – Arecibo message transmitted from Arecibo Observatory to Messier 13.
Hawking radiation is predicted by Stephen Hawking.

The Mark-8 microcomputer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor is designed by Jonathan Titus. It is announced on the cover of the July 1974 issue of Radio-Electronics as "Your Personal Minicomputer".

F. W. Winterbotham publishes The Ultra secret: the inside story of Operation Ultra, Bletchley Park and Enigma, the first popular account of cryptography carried out at Bletchley Park during World War II.

Yves Hellegouarch proposes a connection between Fermat's Last Theorem and the Frey curve.

September 25 - 1974 – The first "Tommy John surgery" for replacement of ulnar collateral ligament of elbow joint is performed by Frank Jobe in the United States.
Identification of controlled trials in perinatal medicine, as advocated by Archie Cochrane, begins in Cardiff, Wales.
Henry Heimlich describes the "Heimlich Maneuver" as a treatment for choking.

November 24 – A group of paleoanthropologists discover remains of a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, nicknaming her "Lucy".

May 18 – "Smiling Buddha", India's first nuclear test explosion takes place underground at Pokhran.
"November Revolution": J/ψ meson, the first particle found to contain a charm quark, discovered by teams at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, led by Samuel Ting, and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, led by Burton Richter.

May – British neuroscientists John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz announce their isolation of the peptides met- and leu-enkephalin.

Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins is published by Konrad Lorenz.

Leon Kamin demonstrates that Sir Cyril Burt's influential research into heritability of IQ using twin studies shows evidence of statistical falsification.

June 26 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time, to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, the first use of barcode technology in American retailing.
Stephen Salter invents the "Salter Duck", a wave energy converter.

January 7 – Outbreak of 4-year Gombe Chimpanzee War in Tanzania, reported by Jane Goodall.
Digital dermatitis in cattle identified in Italy by Cheli and Mortellaro.