2002 in science

Astronomy and space science

• February 19 – NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
• May 26 – The Mars Odyssey finds signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.
• June 4 – The ringed dwarf planet Quaoar is discovered by astronomers Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown at the Palomar Observatory.
• June 6 – 2002 Eastern Mediterranean event: An object with an estimated diameter of 10 meters impacts with Earth's atmosphere over the Mediterranean and detonates in mid-air.
• June 10 – Solar eclipse of June 10, 2002: Annular solar eclipse.
• September 25 – 2002 Vitim event: Possible bolide impact in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia.
• December 4 – Solar eclipse of December 4, 2002: Total solar eclipse.

  Biology

• 1 March – DNA barcoding of the dodo is published, confirming it as a member of the Columbidae family.
• 18 April – New suborder of insects, Mantophasmatidae, announced.
• Publication of Systema Porifera: a guide to the classification of sponges edited by John N. A. Hooper and Rob W. M. Van Soest.

  Cartography

• Hobo–Dyer projection commissioned.

  Computer science and cybernetics

• January 7 – The iMac G4 is introduced by Apple, Inc., as the next generation iMac.
• March 14 – Prof. Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading in England has part of his nervous system experimentally linked to a computer. On June 10, he demonstrates the first direct electronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans.
• September 20 – Release of the Tor anonymity network is announced.
• September 23 – The first version of the web browser Firefox is released by the Mozilla Organization.
• October 1 – The Danger Hiptop is released, the first smartphone to incorporate instant messaging.

  Earth sciences

• January 17 – Eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.

  Mathematics

• August 6 – Polynomial-time primality test published.
• November 12 – Grigori Perelman posts the first of a series of eprints to the arXiv in which he proves the century-old Poincaré conjecture.

  Palaeoarchaeology

• Ciampate del Diavolo come to scientific attention.

  Philosophy

Physics

• March 8 – Claims regarding bubble fusion, in which a table-top apparatus is reported as producing small-scale fusion in a liquid undergoing acoustic cavitation, are published.
• May – Experimental discovery of a new type of radioactivity: the 2-protons radioactivity.

  Physiology and medicine

• February – Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells in the eye identified by Samer Hattar and colleagues.
• May 14 – Red wine is claimed by Spanish researchers to protect against the common cold.
• June – The gene BRAF is shown to be faulty in some human cancers.
• November – Severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic begins in Guangdong province of China.
• December 19 – Clozapine is the first drug approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for reducing the risk of suicidal behaviour.

  Technology

• November 4 – A Tactical High Energy Laser prototype shoots down an incoming artillery shell.
• Malcolm C. Smith introduces the inerter in the study of the mechanical network in control theory.

  Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics: Laurent Lafforgue and Vladimir Voevodsky
• Nobel Prizes
• * Chemistry
• ** John B. Fenn and Koichi Tanaka "for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules"
• ** Kurt Wüthrich "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution"
• * Physics
• ** Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos"
• ** Riccardo Giacconi "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources"
• * Medicine
• ** Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz and John E. Sulston "for their discoveries concerning genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death"
• Turing Award: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Rudolf Trumpy

  Deaths

• January 8 – Alexander Prokhorov, physicist.
• February 6 – Max Perutz, biologist.
• February 10 – Harold Furth, expert in plasma physics and nuclear fusion.
• February 24 – David Hawkins, philosopher of science and mathematics and science educator.
• February 26 – Helen Megaw, crystallographer.
• March 3 – Roy Porter, medical historian.
• April 9 – Leopold Vietoris, mathematician.
• April 18 – Thor Heyerdahl, explorer, led the Kon-Tiki expedition.
• May 2 – W. T. Tutte, mathematician and cryptanalyst.
• May 20 – Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist/evolutionist.
• June 20 – Erwin Chargaff, biochemist.
• June 29 – Ole-Johan Dahl, computer scientist, invented concepts in object-oriented programming.
• June 30 – W. Maxwell Cowan, neuroanatomist.
• July 4 – Laurent Schwartz, mathematician.
• August 6 – Edsger Dijkstra, computer scientist.
• August 31 – George Porter, Nobel laureate in chemistry.
• September 6 – Orvan Hess, obstetrician.
• September 21 – Robert Lull Forward, science fiction author and physicist.
• September 29 – Giuliana Tesoro, Italian-American organic chemist
• October 18 – Nikolai Rukavishnikov, cosmonaut.
• November 2 – Charles Sheffield, science fiction author and physicist.
• November 11 – Esther Somerfeld-Ziskind, neurologist and psychiatrist.