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The year 1957 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• October 4 - Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite

• November 3 - Launch of Sputnik 2, with a dog called Laika on board, the first animal sent into orbit.

• December 6 - US attempted launch of Vanguard TV3 which fails after just two seconds in the air.

• Project Orion begins, a U.S. program to build a spacecraft powered by nuclear explosions.

Biology

• Structure of myoglobin determined by x-ray crystallography

Computer science

• April - IBM delivers the first compiler for the FORTRAN scientific programming language. It becomes the most widely used computer language for technical work.
• Robert C. Prim independently rediscovers Prim's algorithm. It was first discovered in 1930 by Vojtěch Jarník and independently rediscovered again by Edsger Dijkstra in 1959.

Exploration

• Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station established

Physics

• BCS theory of superconductivity developed by John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer
• B²FH, an astrophysics paper by the British astronomers Geoffrey Burbidge, Margaret Burbidge and Fred Hoyle and the American astronomer William Fowler, describes the synnthesis of the lightest elements through nuclear processes in stars.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes:
  • Physics - Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee
  • Chemistry- Lord Alexander R Todd
  • Medicine - Daniel Bovet

Births

• July 12 - Rick D. Husband (d. 2003), American astronaut.
• October 21 - Wolfgang Ketterle, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 2001

Deaths

• February 8 -
• - John von Neumann (b. 1903), mathematician.
• - Walther Bothe (b. 1891), physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1954.
• February 18 - Henry Norris Russell (b. 1877), astronomer.
• May 7 - Wilhelm Filchner (b. 1877), explorer.
• August 16 - Irving Langmuir (b. 1881), chemist & Physicist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1932
• August 21 - Harald Ulrik Sverdrup (b. 1888), meteorologist and oceanographer.