1848 in science
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The year 1848 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Contents |
[edit] Events
- September 20 - The American Association for the Advancement of Science is set up in Pennsylvania by re-formation of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, with William Charles Redfield as its first president.
[edit] Astronomy
- September 16 - William Cranch Bond and William Lassell discover Hyperion, Saturn's moon.
- Lord Rosse studies M1 and names it the Crab Nebula.
- Rudolf Wolf (in Zurich) devises a way of quantifying sunspot activity, the Wolf number.[1]
[edit] Botany
- April 16 - Joseph Dalton Hooker arrives at Darjeeling to begin the first European plant collecting expedition in the Himalayas.
[edit] Chemistry
- Edward Frankland, working in Germany, discovers the organometallic compound diethylzinc.
[edit] Exploration
- Admiral Nevelskoi demonstrates that the Strait of Tartary is a strait.
[edit] Medicine
- September 13 - Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3-foot-plus (1 m) iron rod being driven through his head, providing a demonstration of the effects of damage to the brain's frontal lobe.
- November 1 - The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School, opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Alfred Baring Garrod recognises that excess uric acid in the blood is the cause of gout.[2]
- Rudolf Virchow produces a Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia advocating broad social as well as public health measures to counter such outbreaks.[3]
[edit] Physics
- Lord Kelvin discovers the absolute zero point of temperature.
- Nicholas Callan of Maynooth College invents an improved form of battery.[4]
[edit] Technology
- The Warren truss is patented by James Warren.
- James Bogardus erects the first free-standing cast-iron architectural façade, the Milhau Pharmacy Building in New York City.
- Completion of palm houses at Kew Gardens, London, and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, by Richard Turner of Dublin.
- Joseph-Louis Lambot constructs the first ferrocement boat.
[edit] Awards
- Copley Medal: John Couch Adams
- Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Buckland
[edit] Births
- May 23 - Otto Lilienthal (d. 1896), aviation pioneer.
- November 8 - Gottlob Frege (d. 1925), mathematician.
[edit] Deaths
- January 9 - Caroline Herschel (b. 1750), astronomer.
- August 7 - Jöns Jakob Berzelius (b. 1779), chemist.
- August 12 - George Stephenson (b. 1781), locomotive engineer.
- December 18 - Bernhard Bolzano (b. 1781), mathematician.
[edit] References
- ^ "The Sun - History". 2001-11-25. http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/whsun.html. Retrieved 2012-01-08.
- ^ Storey, G. D. (October 2001). "Alfred Baring Garrod (1819-1907)". Rheumatology (Oxford) 40 (10): 1189–90. doi:10.1093/rheumatology/40.10.1189. PMID 11600751. http://rheumatology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/40/10/1189.
- ^ Silver, George A. (January 1987). "Virchow, the heroic model in medicine: health policy by accolade". American Journal of Public Health 77: 82–88. PMC 1646803. PMID 3538915. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1646803. Retrieved 2011-04-04.
- ^ Year-book of Facts. 1848.
