What was going on when I was born?

Columbia University's trustees had one great honor left to give I. I. Rabi, and they gave it yesterday, announcing the creation of an Isidor Isaac Rabi chair in physics. Columbia has named few professorships for its scholars in their lifetimes. Dr. Rabi, its first University Professor, the Nobel Prize winner who created its renowned postwar physics department, was recognized at the age of 87 for a rare combination of achievements in pure science and public service. ''I. I. Rabi is a brilliant jewel in Columbia's crown,'' said Columbia's president, Michael I. Sovern. ''He is one of the truly extraordinary scientists of our century, a wise and humane man who has been and remains a beacon for nuclear sanity in our threatened world. We are exceptionally proud to create a professorship in the name of this worthy man.''

Tantalizing but sketchy clues pointing to Africa as the origin of AIDS have unleashed one of the bitterest disputes in the recent annals of medicine. Thus far the search has led American research to two African children who in 1963 lived in Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso. On the basis of blood samples that had been frozen and stored since that time, they are believed to have been infected with the AIDS virus or with one similar to it. This clue and several others have led to what has now emerged as the prevailing thesis in American and European medical circles that the worldwide spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome began in Central Africa, the home of several other recently recognized diseases. Disagreement by Africans The Africans vigorously disagree, and there is some criticism of the validity of the studies on which the theories are predicated. Indeed, controversial new results that point both to and against Africa as the origin of AIDS are fueling the international furor.

A Company News report in Business Day on Tuesday about Ameritech's planned purchase of Applied Data Research Inc. incorrectly quoted a securities analyst, Scott Smith of the Gartner Group, who discussed the $215 million price. He said the price equaled about one and a half times Applied Data's annual revenues, not its earnings.

A Washington dispatch on Oct. 8, about action by the Environmental Protection Agency to ban some products, misstated the decision. Because of the skin cancer risk, it banned most pesticide products containing creosote and coal tar, aside from wood preservatives.

''If the two leaders spent more than four hours together, I would think the chemistry is pretty good.'' - Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman. [A16:5.]

Once upon a time, Beaujolais was just a wine. Now it is a happening. At midnight Wednesday night, 4,000 trucks, 30 Boeing 747's and a dozen ships were on hand and started to transport 64 million bottles of 1985 Beaujolais nouveau from the region that gave the wine its name to some 64 countries throughout the world. For the last 18 years, Beaujolais producers have been promoting their ''new'' wine in increasingly lavish and aggressive sales campaigns. Several years ago, producers helped make the young, unfinished wine a household name by seizing upon the idea of organizing an annual race to see which country, city, or restaurant would be the first to receive a shipment of nouveau.

Two hundred poor and middle-class residents of East New York went to City Hall yesterday for an emotional and sometimes angry hearing on a proposal by a coalition of churches to build 1,500 low-cost single-family houses in their neighborhood. Half the residents went to praise the plan, arguing that it would be the beginning of a rebirth of the East New York section of Brooklyn. But the other half went to fight it, citing the up to 250 families that would have to be relocated as existing buildings were torn down to make way for the new houses. ''It's the classic urban-renewal battle,'' said Herbert J. Sturz, the chairman of the City Planning Commission, which held the hearing. ''Everyone agrees on the basic rebuilding of East New York. The question is, to what degree do you rebuild?''

The commodities industry is digging in its heels for a battle with its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, over tough new capital rules the commission has proposed. On Tuesday, the directors of the Chicago Board of Trade, the country's largest futures exchange, decided at a long meeting to set aside $1 million for a legal defense fund. And a number of other commodities exchanges and large commodities brokers, including Merrill Lynch Futures, Cargill Investor Services and Goldman, Sachs & Company, are lobbying against the proposed rules. At stake, industry officials say, is the survival of many commodities brokerage firms. The New York Commodity Exchange, for instance, contended that 30 percent of its member firms could not now meet the proposed new capital rules, and thus would have to find more capital or go out of business. Both the Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have contended that up to 40 percent of their firms would not have the capital.

The nation's economy grew at an annual rate of 4.3 percent in the third quarter, considerably faster than previously estimated, the Commerce Department reported today. Economists were generally heartened by today's report. Most of them had expected a downward revision in the 3.3 percent rate of expansion tentatively announced last month. And today the Reagan Administration reaffirmed its prediction that growth of the gross national product would be even stronger in the fourth quarter.

In a dramatic move to undo years of diversification efforts, Allied-Signal Inc. said yesterday that it would spin off 30 subsidiary operations into a separate company having $3 billion a year in business. The spinoff is the largest of its kind since the breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company on Jan. 1, 1984. ''It's going to write business history with the way it was done,'' said Michael D. Dingman, president of Allied-Signal, who will leave the company to become head of the new corporation, which is still unnamed. ''This one will come under a microscope,'' added Edward L. Hennessy Jr., Allied-Signal chairman and chief executive officer, in an interview.

The House Banking Committee approved a bill today that would reduce by as much as 70 percent the time banks are allowed to clear checks deposited by customers. In the first piece of consumer banking legislation to go through the committee this year, the bill requires banks to reduce clearing time of out-of-state checks to three business days, within three years of passage, and to give next-day availability of deposited checks drawn on local banks. The bill, passed on a unanimous voice vote, now goes to the full House for consideration. Passage is expected in the House and could come as soon as next month. But Congressional aides said consideration of tax and budget measures was likely to delay House action until early next year.

An article on Tuesday about the slaying of Nicholas L. Deak, the founder of Deak & Company, the foreign-exchange concern, discussed allegations made in October 1984 by a Federal commission on organized crime that the company had been used to launder drug money.