The year 1997 in science and technology had many significant events, including those listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

* February 13 - Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope is started by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
* July 4 - Mars Pathfinder lands on the surface of Mars
* August 25 - Launch of Explorer 71 of the Explorer program of spacecraft
* October 30 - First successful test flight of the ESA's Ariane 5 expendable launch system

Aviation

* September 7 - First test flight of the F-22 Raptor

Biology

* February 22 - In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned and was born in July 1996
* March 4 - United States President Bill Clinton bars federal funding for any research on human cloning
* April 25 - Scientists announce that Human artificial chromosomes have been created.
* July 10 - In London, scientists report their DNA analysis findings from a Neandertal skeleton which support the out of Africa theory of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago
* November 19 - In Carlisle, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive

Computer science

* May 11 - IBM's Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov, the first time a computer defeated a chess grand master in a match. Deep Blue had defeated Kasparov before, but had never won a match against him.

Geology

* May 10 - An earthquake near Ardekul in northeastern Iran kills at least 2,400

Medicine

* Food and Drug Administration approval of daclizumab, the first humanized antibody therapeutic.

Technology

* October 15 - The first supersonic land speed record is set by the ThrustSSC team from the United Kingdom

Awards

* Nobel Prizes
** Physics - Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, William D. Phillips
** Chemistry - Paul D. Boyer, John E. Walker, Jens Christian Skou
** Medicine - Stanley B. Prusiner
* Turing Award - Douglas Engelbart
* Wollaston Medal for Geology - Douglas James Shearman

Births

Deaths

* January 17 - Clyde Tombaugh (b. 1906), astronomer, discoveror of Pluto
* April 7 - Georgi Shonin (b. 1935), cosmonaut.
* May 2 - John Carew Eccles (b. 1903), psychologist
* August 24 - Louis Essen (b. 1908), physicist, co-developer of the first practical atomic clock
* September 4 - Hans Eysenck (b. 1916), psychologist.

References

# Reference: Waldman, Thomas A. (2003). Immunotherapy: past, present and future . Nature Medicine 9, 269-277.

Science
Category:1990s in science