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By the very nature of that curve, 1960 was the richest of all scientific years, and the years ahead must be even more fruitful. It was not a year of breath-taking breakthrough in the formulation of new and basic principle; 1960 was a year of massive advance on nearly all scientific fronts. Among 1960's major developments:
¶In molecular biology, the study of the chemical basis of life and one of the most exciting free frontiers of modern science, man seemed verging on basic understanding of life's origin and processes. In dozens of laboratories, scientists attacked and began to unravel the secrets of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the big and enormously complicated molecule that acts as a coded genetic instruction book, decreeing how every living organism will develop, deciding what will be a mollusk, what a monkey, and what a man.
¶In physics, technology came to the aid of the theoreticians, who had seemed approaching a dead end. Confronted by subatomic particles whose existence they had only recently recognized and whose behavior they still cannot explain, the physicists desperately needed high-energy equipment with which they could bombard and shatter, and thus study, the odd and infinitesimal particles that are the heart of all matter. The physicists got that equipment in 1960 with the successful operation of a great proton synchrotron at Brookhaven, Long Island, which generated 30 billion electron volts at its first try, and in a very similar machine in Switzerland.
¶In solid-state physics, the maser replaced the transistor as the hottest of all items. Masers (from Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) are a large and fast-growing family of instruments working on the principle that molecules and atoms can exist on two or more energy levels. When they fall from a high to a low level, they give off electromagnetic waves that act as incredibly sensitive amplifiers. Charles Townes developed the radio-frequency maser in 1954; in 1960 came the first successes with light masers. Dealing with waves of visible light that can travel without distortion for distances bordering on infinity, they can be used to seek out galaxies at the edge of the knowable universe, as a possible means for humans to communicate with the creatures of other worlds.
¶In chemistry, Harvard's Robert Woodward climaxed a drive in the field of synthesis by producing a laboratory version of chlorophyll—the large (137 atoms), complex and fragile molecule that, as the green, food-producing substance in the leaves of plants, supports much of earth's life. In its final result, Woodward's chlorophyll synthesis was a chemical witch's brew, requiring 55 separate and enormously complicated steps.
¶In astronomy, Palomar's 200-in. optical telescope photographed two colliding galaxies six billion light-years from the earth—by far the most distant objects ever pictured. But even more significant was the part played in the accomplishment by one of the newest and most fascinating of all sciences: radio astronomy. It was radio telescopes, beaming in on the waves shot out by the colliding galaxies, that told Palomar where to focus its optical explorer.