1856 in science
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The year 1856 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Archaeology
- First remains of Neanderthal Man found in the Neandertal Valley of Germany.[1]
Astronomy
- N. R. Pogson proposes that the ratio used in Hipparchus' stellar apparent magnitude system should be adopted as a standard.
- NGC 6539 is discovered by Theodor Brorsen.
Biology
- Paul Du Chaillu becomes the first European to observe gorillas in the wild.[2]
- Gregor Mendel starts his research on genetics.
- Lev Tsenkovsky introduces the concept that the lower algae and other infusoria are unicellular organisms.[3]
Chemistry
- March – William Perkin first discovers an aniline dye, mauveine.[4]
- Alexander Parkes patents the first thermoplastic, Parkesine.[5]
- Louis Pasteur crystallizes galactose.[6]
- Charles-Adolphe Wurtz discovers the glycols.
Exploration
- May 20 – Dr David Livingstone arrives at Quelimane on the Indian Ocean having completed a 2-year transcontinental journey across Africa from Luanda.[7]
- Thomas Montgomerie of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India makes the first survey of the Karakoram Range, from Mount Haramukh, Template:Convert to the south, and designates the two most prominent peaks as K1 and K2.[8]
Mathematics
- Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton invents the icosian game, which involves finding the Hamiltonian path on a dodecahedron.
Meteorology
- August 23 – Eunice Newton Foote's paper on "Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun's rays" read at the American Association for the Advancement of Science presents the causes of the greenhouse effect.
- October 4 – American meteorologist William Ferrel demonstrates the tendency of rising and rotating warm air to pull in air from more southerly, warmer regions and transport it poleward.[9]
Paleontology
- American paleontologist Joseph Leidy describes the new tyrannosaurid dinosaur genus and species Deinodon horridus.[10]
Physics
- Henry Darcy formulates Darcy's law on fluid flow.[11]
Technology
- September 22 – British metallurgist Robert Mushet patents improvements to the Bessemer process for the production of steel.[12]
- English agricultural engineer John Fowler first demonstrates his steam-driven agricultural ploughing system.[13]
- English engineer John Ramsbottom invents a tamper-proof spring safety valve for steam locomotives.[14]
- French chemist Alphonse Louis Poitevin invents the collotype photographic process.
- Tinsmith Ralph Collier of Baltimore, Maryland, patents the first egg beater with rotating parts.[15]
- James Harrison produces the world's first practical ice making machine and refrigerator using the principle of vapour compression in Geelong, Australia.[16]
- Moravian Leopold Breit introduces Streichmelodion.
- Sarrusophone patented.
- Approximate date – Bandoneon invented.
Awards
Births
- February 15 – Emil Kraepelin (died 1926), German psychiatrist.
- March 9 – Edward Goodrich Acheson (died 1931), American industrial chemist.
- May 6
- Sigmund Freud (died 1939), Austrian psychoanalyst.
- Robert Peary (died 1920), American polar explorer.
- May 19 – Nadezhda Ziber-Shumova (died 1916), Russian biochemist.
- July 10 – Nikola Tesla (died 1943), Serb inventor.
- August 27 – Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen (died 1921), Danish ornithologist.
- August 30 – Charles Alfred Ballance (died 1936), English surgeon.
- September 14 – Sergei Winogradsky (died 1953), Russian microbiologist.
- December 18 – J. J. Thomson (died 1940), English physicist and Nobel laureate in physics.
Deaths
- February 24 (February 12 Old Style) – Nikolai Lobachevsky (born 1792), Russian mathematician and geometer.
- February 25 – George Don (born 1797), Scottish botanist.
- July 9 – Amedeo Avogadro (born 1776), Italian chemist.
- August 24 – William Buckland (born 1784), English geologist and paleontologist.
- September 1 – William Yarrell (born 1784), English zoologist and bookseller.
- November 20 – Farkas Bolyai (born 1775), Hungarian mathematician.
- November 21 – James Meadows Rendel (born 1799), English civil engineer.
- December 23/24 – Hugh Miller (born 1802), Scottish geologist (suicide).
- date unknown – Enriqueta Favez (born 1791), Swiss physician and surgeon.
References
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- ↑ Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the People, and of the Chace of the Gorilla, Crocodile, and other Animals (1861).
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- ↑ Pasteur (1856). "Note sur le sucre de lait" (Note on milk sugar), Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences, 42:347-351.
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- ↑ U.S. patent 16267.
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