The year 1988 in science and technology

Astronomy and space exploration

• September 29 - NASA resumes space shuttle flights, grounded after the Challenger disaster
• November 15 - In the Soviet Union, the uncrewed Shuttle Buran is launched by an Energia rocket on her maiden orbital spaceflight (this was the first and last space flight for the shuttle).

Computer science

• November 2 - The Morris worm is unleashed on the Internet
• November 17 - The Netherlands becomes the second country to get connected to the Internet.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz , Jack Steinberger
  • Chemistry - Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber, Hartmut Michel
  • Medicine - Sir James W. Black, Gertrude B. Elion, George H. Hitchings
• Turing Award - Ivan Sutherland

Births

Deaths

• January 11 - I.I. Rabi (b. 1898), American physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for invention of the atomic beam magnetic resonance method of measuring magnetic properties of atoms and molecules.
• February 15 - Richard Feynman (b. 1918), American physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics.
• May 8 - Robert Heinlein (b. 1907), science fiction author
• May 25 - Ernst Ruska (b. 1906), Nobel Prize Physicist