1873 in science
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The year 1873 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Chemistry
- Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff and Joseph Achille Le Bel, working independently, develop a model of chemical bonding that explains the chirality experiments of Pasteur and provides a physical cause for optical activity in chiral compounds[1][2]
Exploration
- The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition discovers Franz-Josef Land
Mathematics
- Charles Hermite proves that the mathematical constant e is a transcendental number[3]
- Henri Brocard introduces the Brocard points, Brocard triangle and Brocard circle[3][4][5]
Meteorology
- September 15 – agreement for establishment of the International Meteorological Organization.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
Physics
- February 20 – English electrical engineer Willoughby Smith publishes his discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium[6]
- June 14 – Johannes Diderik van der Waals defends his thesis, Over de Continuiteit van den Gas en Vloeistoftoestand (On the continuity of the gaseous and liquid state) at Leiden University; in this, he introduces the concepts of molecular volume and molecular attraction; gives a semi-quantitative description of the phenomena of condensation and critical temperatures; and derives the van der Waals equation[7]
- September 22 – James Clerk Maxwell delivers a discourse on molecules to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Bradford[8]
- December – J. Willard Gibbs describes the principle of Gibbs free energy[9]
- James Clerk Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism first presents the partial differential equations known as Maxwell's equations which form the foundation of classical electrodynamics, optics and electric circuits
- Frederick Guthrie is the first to report observing thermionic emission[10]
Physiology and medicine
- June 18 – Alice Vickery passes the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's examination, becoming the first qualified female pharmacist in the United Kingdom[11]
- Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, is discovered by Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen. It is the first bacterium to be identified as pathogenic in humans[12][13]
- English allergist Charles Harrison Blackley publishes Experimental Researches on the Causes and Nature of Catarrhus aestivus
- Camillo Golgi first publishes a demonstration of Golgi's method[14]
Technology
- May 20 – Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss receive United States patent#139121 for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim jeans
- Carl von Linde installs his first commercial refrigeration system, built by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg for the Spaten Brewery and using dimethyl ether as the refrigerant
- Christopher Miner Spencer introduces the fully automatic turret lathe[15]
Awards
Births
- February 11 – Louis Charles Christopher Krieger (died 1940), American mycologist
- February 12 – Barnum Brown (died 1963), American paleontologist
- March 5 – Thomas Harrison Montgomery, Jr. (died 1912), American zoologist and cell biologist
- April 25 – Félix d'Herelle (died 1949), French-Canadian microbiologist, a co-discoverer of bacteriophages
- June 28 – Alexis Carrel (died 1942), French surgeon, biologist and winner of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- June 30 – Friedrich Karl Georg Fedde (died 1942), German botanist
- July 7 – Sándor Ferenczi (died 1933), Hungarian psychoanalyst
- October 4 – Dimitrie Pompeiu (died 1954), Romanian mathematician
- October 9 – Karl Schwarzschild (died 1916), German astronomer and physicist
Deaths
- January 27 – Adam Sedgwick (born 1785), English geologist
- February 1 – Matthew Fontaine Maury (born 1806), American oceanographer
- April 18 – Justus von Liebig (born 1803), German chemist
- March 10 – John Torrey (born 1796), American botanist
- March 30 – Bénédict Morel (born 1809), French psychiatrist
- September 15 – Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko (born 1844), Russian naturalist
- September 24 – John Thurnam (born 1810), English psychiatrist and ethnologist
- October 17 – Robert McClure (born 1807), British Arctic explorer
- December 14 – Louis Agassiz (born 1807), Swiss-American zoologist and geologist
References
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- ↑ "Etudes d'un nouveau cercle du plan du triangle". Paper to l'Association française pour l'avancement des sciences.
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- ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1". Also digitised at The Victorian Web. Archived 2012-02-23.
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