2007 in science

Events, discoveries and inventions

• 9 January – Apple Inc.'s first iPhone smartphone is announced by Steve Jobs at Macworld in San Francisco; it is released in the United States on 29 June.
• 12 January – Comet McNaught reaches perihelion and becomes visible from Earth during daylight.
• 14 January – Scientists at the Roslin Institute announce they have genetically engineered chickens to lay eggs containing cancer-fighting proteins.
• 28 February – The New Horizons space probe makes a gravitational slingshot around Jupiter to change its trajectory towards Pluto.
• 3–4 March – A total lunar eclipse occurs, visible in some parts of the Americas and Asia, and in all of Europe and Africa.
• 19 March – A partial solar eclipse occurs, visible in Asia.
• 10 April – Spectroscopic analysis of HD 209458 b, an extrasolar planet, provides the first evidence of atmospheric water vapor beyond the Solar System.
• 24 April – The potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 581 c is discovered in the constellation Libra.
• 27 April – US researchers simulate half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer.
• May – High Resolution Fly's Eye Observatory and Pierre Auger Observatory present their results suggesting a confirmation for the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit, the theoretical limit for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays interacting with the Cosmic Microwave Background.
• 5 June – NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second flyby of Venus en route to Mercury, which it reaches in 2011.
• 2 July – Venus and Saturn are in conjunction, with a separation of 46 arcseconds.
• 28 August – A total lunar eclipse occurs, visible in some parts of the Americas and Asia, and all of Australasia and the Pacific Ocean.
• 11 September – A partial solar eclipse occurs, visible in southern areas of South America.
• 27 September – NASA's Dawn spacecraft is launched, beginning its journey to the asteroid belt objects Vesta and Ceres. It reached Vesta in 2011, and Ceres in 2015.
• 24 October
• * Comet 17P/Holmes suddenly brightens from 17 to 2.8 magnitude.
• * Chang'e 1, the first satellite in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, is launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center; on 5 November it enters lunar orbit.
• 5 November – The Open Handset Alliance launches the Android mobile operating system.

  Prizes

Abel Prize

• 2007 Abel Prize: S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan

  Nobel Prize

• 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Mario Capecchi, Oliver Smithies and Martin Evans
• 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics: Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg
• 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Gerhard Ertl

  Deaths

• 20 February – F. Albert Cotton, American chemist known for research on transition metal chemistry
• 22 February – Lucille Farrier Stickel, American wildlife toxicologist
• 23 March – Paul Cohen, American mathematician, winner of the 1966 Fields Medal
• 27 March – Paul Lauterbur, American chemist, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in developing magnetic resonance imaging
• 4 April – Karen Spärck Jones, English computer scientist
• 7 July – Dame Anne McLaren, English developmental biologist
• 23 July – Ernst Otto Fischer, German winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering work in the area of organometallic chemistry
• 12 August – Ralph Asher Alpher, American cosmologist
• 29 September – Katsuko Saruhashi, Japanese geochemist
• 26 October – Arthur Kornberg, American biochemist, winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of DNA