What was going on when I was born?

A TEAM of six scientists has charged that one of the world's most valuable fossils is a fake, touching off one of the bitterest rows in the history of the British Museum. At the center of the dispute is a priceless specimen that has long been considered the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx. The fossil, kept under lock and key at the British Museum of Natural History, is now being put through a battery of tests by museum scientists to prove its authenticity. Irate researchers have also launched a fusillade of charges and countercharges. The controversy started when six scientists, including Sir Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer, asserted in a scholarly paper in March that the feather impressions of the museum's specimen had been fabricated in a 19th-century hoax.

Paul Thayer, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, and a Dallas stockbroker have offered to pay the Government more than $750,000 to settle civil charges of illegal insider stock trading, according to lawyers involved in the case. The Securities and Exchange Commission was expected to approve the offer under which Mr. Thayer and his friend Billy Bob Harris, a Dallas stockbroker, would cover some of the illegal stock profits that the agency says Mr. Harris and eight other individuals made as a result of the confidential corporate information that Mr. Thayer illegally provided them in 1982. The S.E.C. accused Mr. Thayer of giving Mr. Harris insider information relating to impending takeover offers by companies of which Mr. Thayer was a director. On Wednesday, Mr. Thayer and Mr. Harris are to appear for sentencing before a Federal judge here on criminal charges of obstructing justice in connection with the S.E.C.'s investigation of the $1.9 million insider trading case.

The United States Military Academy, which historically has been in the enviable position of choosing from among the top students in the country, now finds itself having to compete with private colleges to attract cadets in a shrinking market of 18-year-olds. It has revised its recruiting procedures to compete with the better colleges and universities as well as the other military service academies. Some of the new procedures resemble the marketing and head-hunter efforts of private industry. While the overall efforts are broad, special emphasis has been placed on getting blacks to enroll. Col. Manley E. Rogers, the director of admissions at West Point, said that in recruiting blacks, for example, ''It's often an executive search type of operation - telephone calls, letters and visits to the home - or the kind of thing you'd see for an athlete.''

These are frustrating days for victims of Alzheimer's disease, an incurable mental deterioration that robs some two million Americans of their memories and reasoning abilities. The volume of research on Alzheimer's has jumped sharply in recent years, and exciting discoveries are emerging from the nation's laboratories every week. But almost none of this vigorous scientific activity is yet having any impact on the victims and their hard-pressed families. 'Horror Stories' Recounted Even the best medical facilities can do little for Alzheimer's patients except provide good, conventional medical care to prevent additional illness that might complicate the underlying disease. Unfortunately, the vast majority of doctors and nursing homes fail to provide even this limited treatment, according to relatives who related their personal ''horror stories'' at an unusual conference for family members of Alzheimer victims held at the National Institutes of Health last week.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting a broad investigation into possible insider trading involving virtually all of the takeover targets of T. Boone Pickens, chairman of the Mesa Petroleum Company, a recent court document discloses. The investigation is in addition to a narrower S.E.C. investigation of trading in shares of the Unocal Corporation, Mr. Pickens's current target. Mesa disclosed that investigation last week. The broader inquiry suggests that the agency is trying to determine whether someone who knew of Mr. Pickens's plans tipped off others before the plans were made public.

A NUMBER of leading physicists are beginning to suspect that everything in the universe is made of strings. Specifically, all of the basic particles of which the universe is made would be tiny strings - instead of points, as has long been assumed. Some theorists believe the new concept, if confirmed, could represent the boldest step toward understanding the basic constituents of all matter, since the 1920's, when quantum theory emerged as the basis for modern physics. The so-called ''superstring theories,'' proponents say, offer the best hope of developing a unified theory accounting for all the particles of nature and the forces that control them, including gravity. By relating gravity, as defined by Albert Einstein, to the electromagnetic and nuclear forces controlling atoms, molecules and subatomic particles, superstring theories could realize the unfulfilled dream of Einstein and his successors.

THE bitter confrontation between medical scientists and the protectors of animals has escalated to new heights of intensity as the two sides battle over the future of biomedical research. Protests against experiments with animals are mounting and a fast-growing ''animal rights'' movement is pressing for strong controls on such research, which activists say is often cruel and unnecessary. An underground extremist group has begun to sabotage laboratories. Biomedical researchers, worried by an opposition that is more aggressive than ever before, are mobilizing with new urgency to lobby legislators and influence public opinion. They argue that nearly all animal experiments are conducted humanely and are vital to medical progress, and that the overwhelming majority of people will continue supporting animal research if they know the facts.

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1985 International Washington will offer Moscow several proposals tomorrow intended to reduce tensions, including a ''military-to-military communications link,'' according to Reagan Administration officials. [Page A1, Col. 6.] Arms control talks are not hopeless, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, said. In a message to a group of French war veterans, he said he was ''soberly optimistic'' about the prospects for success in the Geneva weapons negotiations. [A5:1-3.]

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland announced today that subscribers would receive membership cards that can contain the equivalent of 800 pages of information on their medical history. Nationwide adoption, the insurer said, is expected in a few years. The card, which health-care providers like hospitals would use in determining treatment, was developed by a group whose leaders were a 19-year-old youth who put off entering college and two 23-year-olds who dropped out of college in their senior year to work on the card. ''I feel like a chaperon some of the time,'' said Thomas H. Sherlock, executive vice president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland and chairman of Health Management Systems, a subsidiary formed by the health insurer to develop the card with the young scientists.

In a surprise move that brought outcries in the personal computer industry today, the International Business Machines Corporation began to provide dealers with free software to accompany some I.B.M. Personal Computer models they sell. The move, which I.B.M. did not announce but confirmed in response to questions today, means that hard-pressed dealers will be able to offer free word processing and financial spreadsheet software with each machine, giving computer purchasers the programs they need for basic functions. But it was immediately attacked by software executives, who said I.B.M. was trying to use its position as the leading computer hardware company in an effort to grab a large share of software sales. Some charged that it resembled ''bundling,'' because it would effectively tie hardware and software sales in one package. I.B.M. voluntarily ceased bundling mainframe software in 1969, a move widely interpreted as an effort to avoid antitrust action.

A report on the Company News page of Business Day on Thursday misstated the value of a transaction involving the Docutel/Olivetti Corporation. A subsidiary of Ing. C. Olivetti & Company will pay $20.2 million for the 54 percent of Docutel/Olivetti's stock that it does not already own.

''I think that science is the stuff that pays for itself on these missions.