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The year 1996 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 30 - Comet Hyakutake was discovered.
• February 17 - NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft launched. The spacecraft landed on the asteroid 433 Eros in 2001.
• May 20 - First naked eye observation of Comet Hale-Bopp.
• November 7 - NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.
• The second 9.8 m reflecting telescope opens at Keck Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Biology

• July 5 - Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, is born.
• August 6 - NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
• The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae's genome is sequenced, it is the first eukaryotic genome to be fully sequenced.

Computer science

• January 23 - The first version of the Java programming language is released.
• February 10 - Deep Blue defeats chess grand-master Garry Kasparov for the first time.
• Lov Grover, at Bell Labs, published the quantum database search algorithm.
• IRCnet is founded.

Exploration

• May 23 - Swede Göran Kropp reaches Mount Everest summit alone without oxygen after having bicycled there from Sweden.

Meteorology

• January 7 - A large blizzard hits the Eastern United States, killing more than 100.
• May 13 - Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh kills 600.
• July 18 - 21 - Storms provoke severe flooding on the Saguenay River in Quebec, in one of Canada's most costly natural disasters.

Technology

• Zenith introduces the first HDTV-compatible front projection TV in the United States. Broadcasters, TV & PC manufacturers set industry standards for digital HDTV.
• APS film format is introduced.
• Successful demonstration of magnetic refrigeration.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff, Robert C. Richardson
  • Chemistry: Robert Curl, Sir Harold Kroto, Richard Smalley
  • Medicine: Peter C. Doherty, Rolf M. Zinkernagel
• Turing Award for Computing: Amir Pnueli
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Nicholas John Shackleton

Births

• July 5 - Dolly the sheep (d. 2003), the world's first cloned mammal.

Deaths

• January 12 - Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (b. 1903), mathematician.
• March 26 - David Packard (b. 1912), engineer.
• June 17 - Thomas Kuhn (b. 1922), philosopher of science.
• August 1 - Tadeus Reichstein (b. 1897), Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
• September 20 - Paul Erdős (b. 1913), mathematician.
• December 20 - Carl Sagan (b. 1934), astronomer.