1.
1851 in science
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The year 1851 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. February – First public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum, at the Meridian of the Paris Observatory, a few weeks later Foucault installs one at the Panthéon. July 28 – Solar eclipse of July 28,1851, Total solar eclipse, the first correctly exposed photograph, a daguerrotype, of the solar corona is made during the total phase of the eclipse by Berkowski at Koenigsberg Observatory in Prussia. October 24 – Ariel and Umbriel, moons of Uranus, are discovered by William Lassell, the William Brydone Jack Observatory is completed at Fredericton, New Brunswick. March – English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer makes public the wet collodion photographic process. George Wilson publishes The Life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish, bernhard Riemann provides a proof of Greens theorem in his inaugural dissertation. The Royal Marsden is established as the Free Cancer Hospital by surgeon William Marsden in London, hippolyte Fizeau carries out the Fizeau experiment to measure the relative speeds of light in moving water. November 13 – First protected submarine telegraph cable laid, across the English Channel, William Armstrong introduces the weight-loaded hydraulic accumulator. Copley Medal, Richard Owen Wollaston Medal for geology, Adam Sedgwick January 19 – Jacobus Kapteyn, march 16 – Martinus Beijerinck, Dutch microbiologist and botanist. April 12 – E. Walter Maunder, astronomer, July 8 – Arthur Evans, archaeologist. July 20 – Arnold Pick, neurologist, august 3 – George FitzGerald, mathematician. January 27 – John James Audubon, naturalist and illustrator, february 18 – Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi, mathematician. March 9 – Hans Christian Ørsted, physicist, July 6 – Thomas Davenport, electrical engineer. July 17 – John Farey, mechanical engineer and technical writer, september 2 – William Nicol, geologist
2.
1852 in science
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The year 1852 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. September 24 – French engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip, last recognised sighting of a great auk, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. August Beer proposes Beers law, which explains the relationship between the composition of a mixture and the amount of light it will absorb, based partly on earlier work by Pierre Bouguer and Johann Heinrich Lambert, it establishes the analytical technique known as spectrophotometry. October 23 – Francis Guthrie poses the four colour problem to Augustus De Morgan, january 15 – Nine representatives of Hebrew charitable organizations come together to form what will become the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. February 15 – The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, march 2 – The first American experimental steam fire engine is tested. The mechanical semaphore line in France is superseded by the electric telegraph, captain E. M. Boxer of the Royal Arsenal devizes an improvement to the shrapnel shell by insertion of an iron diaphragm, preventing premature ignition. Copley Medal, Alexander von Humboldt Wollaston Medal for Geology, William Henry Fitton April 10 – Arthur Vierendeel, may 1 – Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish neuroscientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. August 4 – Catharine van Tussenbroek, Dutch physician, august 30 – Jacobus van t Hoff, Dutch chemist. September 9 – John Henry Poynting, English physicist, discoverer of the Poynting–Robertson effect, september 28 – Isis Pogson, English astronomer and meteorologist. October 2 – William Ramsay, Scottish winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, october 9 – Hermann Emil Fischer, German winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. December 15 – Henri Becquerel, French physicist, january 6 – Louis Braille, French inventor. August 15 – Johan Gadolin, Finnish chemist, september 8 – Anna Maria Walker, Scottish botanist. November 10 – Gideon Mantell, English paleontologist, november 27 – Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, English computing pioneer
3.
1854 in science
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The year 1854 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. July 22 – Discovery of the asteroid 30 Urania by John Russell Hind, George Airy calculates the mean density of the Earth by measuring the gravity in a coal mine in South Shields. Benjamin Silliman of Yale University is the first person to fractionate petroleum into its components by distillation. George Booles work on logic, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. Arthur Cayley states the version of Cayleys theorem and produces the first Cayley table. Bernhard Riemann, a German mathematician, submits his habilitation thesis Ueber die Darstellbarkeit einer Function durch eine trigonometrische Reihe and it is published by Richard Dedekind in 1867. November – Florence Nightingale and her team of trained volunteer nurses arrive at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari in the Ottoman Empire to care for British Army troops invalided from the Crimean War, spanish-born vocal pedagogist Manuel García observes his own functioning glottis using a form of laryngoscope incorporating mirrors. Claude Bernard introduces the term Milieu intérieur in physiology, filippo Pacini, an Italian anatomist, discovers Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes cholera. Louis Pasteur begins studying fermentation at the request of brewers, may 9 – Albert Fink patents the Fink truss in the United States. May 17 – Deck of Wheeling Suspension Bridge in the United States destroyed through torsional movement, July – First voyage by a seagoing steamship fitted with a compound steam engine, the screw steamer Brandon, built on the River Clyde in Scotland by John Elder. December 20 – In the case of Talbot v. Laroche, james Ambrose Cutting takes out three United States patents for improvements to the wet plate collodion process. Elisha Otis completes work on the safety elevator,10 June – The Crystal Palace reopens in Sydenham, South London with life-size dinosaur models in the grounds. Copley Medal, Johannes Peter Müller Wollaston Medal for Geology, Richard John Griffith January 27 – George Alexander Gibson, Scottish physician, January 29 – Fred Baker, American physician and naturalist. March 4 – Napier Shaw, English meteorologist, march 15 – Emil Adolf von Behring, German physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901. March 31 – Dugald Clerk, Scottish mechanical engineer, april 28 – Phoebe Marks, later Hertha Ayrton, English electrical engineer. April 29 – Henri Poincaré, French mathematician, may 11 – Ottmar Mergenthaler, German-born inventor. June 13 – Charles Algernon Parsons, British inventor of the steam turbine, July 12 – George Eastman, American photographic inventor. July 23 – Birt Acres, American-born cinematographic inventor, october 3 – Hermann Struve, Russian-born astronomer
4.
1858 in science
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The year 1858 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. In Luxor, Egypt, the Rhind papyrus is found, it is called the Ahmes papyrus for the scribe who wrote it around 1650 BC. Donatis Comet, the first comet to be photographed, is discovered by Giovanni Battista Donati on 2 June, william Herschel initiates fingerprinting as a means of identification, in Bengal. George Benthams Handbook of the British flora is published and this will be in use for a century. Publication of Darwins theory, June 18 – Charles Darwin receives papers from Alfred Russel Wallace setting out the theory of natural selection which he forwards to Charles Lyell. They are first published on August 20, february 13 – Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke become the first Europeans to discover Lake Tanganyika. August 3 – John Hanning Speke discovers Lake Victoria, source of the River Nile, the Möbius strip is discovered independently by German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing. Arthur Cayley publishes A memoir on the theory of matrices, introducing the concept of the matrix in mathematics. August 2 – Medical Act 1858 passed to Regulate the Qualifications of Practitioners in Medicine, publication in London of Thomas B. Peacocks On Malformations, &c. of the Human Heart, with cases which becomes a standard cardiology textbook. French pediatrician Eugène Bouchut develops a new technique for non-surgical orotracheal intubation to bypass laryngeal obstruction resulting from a diphtheria-related pseudomembrane, first treatise on postpartum psychiatric disturbances, by Louis-Victor Marcé, MD. January 31 – I. K. Brunels SS Great Eastern, August – The first aerial photography is carried out by Nadar from a moored balloon in France using the collodion process. Hoffmann kiln patented in Germany by Friedrich Hoffmann for continuous production brickmaking, copley Medal, Charles Lyell Wollaston Medal for geology, James Hall January 28 – Eugène Dubois, Dutch paleoanthropologist. February 7 – Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate, Dutch anthropologist, march 18 – Rudolf Diesel, German mechanical engineer. April 23 – Max Planck, German theoretical physicist, may 19 – Thomas Allinson, English physician and dietetic reformer. August 11 – Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physiologist, August 19 – Ellen Willmott, English horticulturist. August 27 – Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician, october 4 – Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, Banat-born physicist. November 1 – Ludwig Struve, Russian astronomer, november 30 – Jagadish Chandra Bose, Bengali physicist
5.
1859 in science
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The year 1859 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. This is also called the Carrington event, Richard Carrington being the first known person to observe solar flares and it is also the first major solar radiation storm to be recorded. Marian Albertovich Kowalski publishes the first usable method to deduce the rotation of the Milky Way, English clergyman Thomas William Webb publishes the first edition of his popular amateur guide Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes. November 3 – Alfred Russel Wallaces paper On the Zoological geography of the Malay Archipelago, november 24 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. December – Joseph Dalton Hookers Introductory Essay to the Flora Tasmaniae supports Darwins theories, isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, in the second volume of Histoire naturelle générale des Règnes organiques, introduces the term ethology. Wilhelm Peters first describes the guppy from Venezuela, rudolf Virchow publishes Vorlesungen über Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologischer und pathologischer Gewebelehre, a major textbook on cellular pathology. Benjamin Collins Brodie reports the highly lamellar structure of thermally reduced graphite oxide, august von Hofmann isolates sorbic acid. Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen invent an improved spectroscope, John Tyndall discovers that some gases block infrared radiation. He suggests that changes in the concentration of gases could bring climate change. The Royal Geographical Society of London is granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria, arthur Cayley produces the first Cayley–Klein metric. Bernhard Riemann publishes his paper on number theory, Ueber die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Grösse including the Riemann zeta function, florence Nightingale publishes Notes on Nursing, What it is and What it is Not in London. District nursing begins in Liverpool, England, when philanthropist William Rathbone employs Mary Robinson to nurse the sick poor in their own homes, may 2 – Isambard Kingdom Brunels Royal Albert Bridge for the Cornwall Railway at Saltash in England is officially opened. November 24 – French ironclad Gloire launched, the first ocean-going ironclad battleship, Thomas Aveling of Rochester, Kent, England, produces the first traction engine, by modification of an existing machine. Étienne Lenoir, working in Paris, produces the first single-cylinder two-stroke Lenoir cycle gas engine with an ignition system. January 19 – Alice Eastwood, Canadian-born botanist, february 14 George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. American civil engineer, inventor of the Ferris wheel, henry Valentine Knaggs, English practitioner of naturopathic medicine. February 19 – Svante Arrhenius, Swedish winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, february 28 – Florian Cajori, Swiss historian of mathematics. March 4 – Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Russian physicist, march 10 – Frank Leverett, American glaciologist
