1887 in science
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The year 1887 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.
Contents |
[edit] Events
- March 7 - North Carolina State University is established as North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
- September 28 - Start of the Yellow River floods in China: 900,000 dead.
[edit] Astronomy
- Theodor von Oppolzer's Canon der Finsternisse, a compilation of the 8,000 solar and 5,200 lunar eclipses from 1,200 B.C. until 2,161 A.D., is published posthumously.[1]
[edit] Biology
- Jean Pierre Mégnin publishes Faune des Tombeaux ("Fauna of the Tombs"), the founding work of modern forensic entomology.[2]
- Sergei Winogradsky discovers the first known form of lithotrophy during his research with Beggiatoa.[3]
[edit] Conservation
- June 23 - The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada, creating that nation's first national park, Banff National Park.[4]
[edit] Geophysics
- In Hawaii, the Mauna Loa volcano eruptions subside, having begun in 1843. During the 1887 eruption, about 2½ million tons (2.3 million metric tons) of lava per hour pours out, covering an area of 29 km².
[edit] Linguistics
- March 3 - Anne Sullivan begins to teach language to the deaf and blind Helen Keller.
- July 26 - L. L. Zamenhof publishes Lingvo internacia ("International language") under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto".[5]
[edit] Medicine
- January 11 - Louis Pasteur's anti-rabies treatment is defended in the French Academy of Medicine by Dr. Joseph Grancher.
- August - The U.S. National Institutes of Health is founded at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, NY, as the Laboratory of Hygiene.
- October 1 - Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese founded by Patrick Manson.[6]
- Franz König publishes "Über freie Körper in den Gelenken" in the journal Deutsche Zeitschrift für Chirurgie, first describing (and naming) the disease Osteochondritis dissecans.
- The Hospitals Association establishes the first (non-statutory and voluntary) register of nurses in the United Kingdom.
[edit] Physics
- November - The Michelson-Morley experiment is performed, indicating that the speed of light is independent of motion.
- Heinrich Hertz discovers electromagnetism.
[edit] Psychology
- November - G. Stanley Hall founds The American Journal of Psychology.
- Richard Hodgson and S. J. Davey, in the course of investigations into popular belief in parapsychology, publish one of the first descriptions of eyewitness unreliability.[7]
[edit] Technology
- March 8 - Everett Horton of Connecticut patents a fishing rod of telescoping steel tubes.
- March 13 - Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs.
- August - Anna Connelly patents the fire escape.
- November 8 - Emile Berliner is granted a patent for his Gramophone.
- The comptometer is patented by Dorr Eugene Felt.
- Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick invents the contact lens, made of a type of brown glass.
- Thomas Stevens (cyclist) becomes the first man to bicycle around the world.
[edit] Awards
- June - William Armstrong created 1st Baron Armstrong of Cragside, the first engineer to be raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom
- Copley Medal: Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Wollaston Medal for Geology: John Whitaker Hulke
[edit] Births
- January 15 - Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr. (d. 1969), American conservationist.
- June 22 - Julian Huxley (d. 1975), English biologist and populariser of science.
- August 18 - Erwin Schrödinger (d. 1961), Austrian physicist.
- November 19 - James B. Sumner (d. 1955), American winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- November 23 - Henry Moseley (k. 1915), English physicist.
- December 13 - George Pólya (d. 1985), Hungarian mathematician.
- December 22 - Srinivasa Ramanujan (d. 1920), Indian mathematician.
[edit] Deaths
- January 22 - Joseph Whitworth (b. 1803), mechanical engineer.
- August 15 - Julius von Haast (b. 1824), geologist.
- August 19 - Spencer Fullerton Baird (b. 1823), ornithologist and ichthyologist.
- August 19 - Alvan Clark (b. 1804), telescope manufacturer.
- October 7 (O.S. September 25) - Lev Tsenkovsky (b. 1822), biologist.
- October 17 - Gustav Kirchhoff (b. 1824), physicist.
- November 18 - Gustav Fechner (b. 1801), psychologist.
[edit] References
- ^ von Oppolzer, Th. Canon der Finsternisse. Vienna: Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei [= Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Math.-naturw. Kl., Bd. 52]; repr. with preface by Donald H. Menzel and English translation of the introduction by Owen Gingerich, New York: Dover Publications, 1962.
- ^ Klotzbach, H.; Krettek, R. et al. (2004). "The history of forensic entomology in German-speaking countries". Forensic Science International 144 (2–3): 259–263. doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2004.04.062. PMID 15364399. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379073804002804. Retrieved 2011-11-22.
- ^ Winogradsky, S. (1887). "Über Schwefelbakterien". Botanische Zeitung (45): 489–610.
- ^ "Canada Creates National Park". This Week in History Archives. Parks Canada. http://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/cseh-twih/archives2_E.asp?id=25. Retrieved 2011-04-10.
- ^ Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah, ed (2009). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. p. 375. ISBN 9780080877747.
- ^ "History & Development". The University of Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. 2006. http://www.hku.hk/facmed/01us_history.htm. Retrieved 2011-04-05.
- ^ "The Possibilities of Malobservation and Lapse of Memory from a Practical Point of View". Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 4 (Internetversion).
