1862 in science
| List of years in science |
|---|
| (table) |
| 1862 in science |
|---|
| Fields |
| Technology |
| Social sciences |
| Paleontology |
| Extraterrestrial environment |
| Terrestrial environment |
| Other/related |
The year 1862 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
[edit]- January 31 – Alvan Graham Clark makes the first observation of Sirius B, a white dwarf star, through an eighteen-inch telescope at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Biology
[edit]- May 15 – Charles Darwin publishes On the various contrivances by which British and foreign Orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing.
- Henry Walter Bates publishes "Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidae"[1] describing Batesian mimicry.
- George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker begin publication of Genera plantarum based on the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England.[2]
- John Gwyn Jeffreys begins publication of British Conchology, or an account of the Mollusca which now inhabit the British Isles and the surrounding seas.
Chemistry
[edit]- Chemist and composer Alexander Borodin describes the first nucleophilic displacement of chlorine by fluorine in benzoyl chloride.[3]
- Mineralogist Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois makes the first proposal to arrange the chemical elements in order of atomic weights, although this is largely ignored by chemists.[4]
- Alexander Parkes exhibits Parkesine, one of the earliest synthetic polymers, at the International Exhibition in London. This discovery forms the foundation of the modern plastics industry.[5]
Earth sciences
[edit]- Friedrich Albert Fallou publishes "Pedologie oder allgemeine und besondere Bodenkunde" (Pedology or general and special soil science), founding soil science.[6]
Medicine
[edit]- Maurice Raynaud describes the vasospastic syndrome named after him in his doctoral dissertation.[7]
- Hermann Snellen publishes the Snellen chart for testing visual acuity.
Paleontology
[edit]- November 20 – Richard Owen first describes a fossilised bird, Archaeopteryx, to the Royal Society of London.[8]
Technology
[edit]- July 8 – Theodore Timby is granted a United States patent for discharging guns in a revolving turret, using electricity.
- July 22 – Henry O. Peabody is granted a United States patent for the Peabody action for rifles.
- November 4 – Richard Jordan Gatling is granted a United States patent for the Gatling gun.
- Brown & Sharpe produce the first Universal Milling machine.[9]
- David Kirkaldy publishes Results of an Experimental Inquiry into the Comparative Tensile Strength and other properties of various kinds of Wrought-Iron and Steel in Glasgow describing his pioneering work in tensile testing.
Awards
[edit]Births
[edit]- January 23 – David Hilbert (died 1943), German mathematician
- February 14 – Agnes Pockels (died 1935), German chemist (in Venice)
- March 14 – Vilhelm Bjerknes (died 1951), Norwegian physicist and meteorologist
- May 27 – John Edward Campbell (died 1924), Irish-born mathematician
- June 7 – Philipp Lenard (died 1947), German physicist
- June 9 – Ernest William Moir (died 1933), British civil engineer
- July 2 – William Henry Bragg (died 1942), English winner of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics
- August 2 – Paul Bujor (died 1952), Romanian animal morphologist, politician and short story writer
- October 12 – Theodor Boveri (died 1915), German geneticist
- October 19 – Auguste Lumière (died 1954), French inventor, film pioneer
- November 23 - Ernest Guglielminetti (died 1943), Swiss physician[11]
- William Hoskins (died 1934), American inventor
Deaths
[edit]- January 10 – Samuel Colt (born 1814), American inventor
- February 3 – Jean-Baptiste Biot (born 1774), French physicist
- February 7 – Prosper Ménière (born 1799), French physician who first described the symptoms of Ménière's disease
- February 11 – Luther V. Bell (born 1806), American psychiatric physician
- March 1 – Peter Barlow (born 1776), English mathematician
- April 3 – Sir James Clark Ross (born 1800), English explorer of the Polar regions
- May 6 – Olry Terquem (born 1782), French Jewish geometer
- October 8 – James Walker (born 1781), Scottish-born civil engineer
- October 21 – Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet (born 1783), English physiologist
- December 18 – Lucas Barrett (born 1837), English naturalist (drowned)
- December 20 – Robert Knox (born 1791), Scottish anatomist
- December 21 – Karl Kreil (born 1798), Austrian astronomer
References
[edit]- ^ Transactions of the Linnean Society (London) 23 pp. 495–566.
- ^ Isely, Duane (1994). One hundred and one botanists. Ames: Iowa State University Press.
- ^ Behrman, E. J. (2006). "Borodin". Journal of Chemical Education. 83 (8): 1138. Bibcode:2006JChEd..83.1138B. doi:10.1021/ed083p1138.1.
- ^ "The Periodic Table". Retrieved 2011-10-07.
- ^ "Alexander Parkes (1813–1890)". People & Polymers. Plastics Historical Society. Archived from the original on 2007-03-15. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ Yarilov, A. A. (1904). "Fr. A'b, Fallu, osnovatel' pedologii" [Fr. A'b, Fallu, founder of soil science]. Pochvovedenie (in Russian). 2: 125–135.
- ^ Wigley, F. M.; Flavahan, N. A. (2016-08-11). "Raynaud's Phenomenon". The New England Journal of Medicine. 375 (6): 556–65. doi:10.1056/nejmra1507638. PMID 27509103.
- ^ Owen, R. (1863). "On the archeopteryx of von Meyer, with a description of the fossil remains of a long-tailed species, from the lithographic stone of Solenhofen". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 153. London: 33–47. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Tool Builders, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, LCCN 16011753. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (LCCN 27-24075); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).
- ^ "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
- ^ (in Italian, French, and German) Heldner, Paul (21 July 2005). "Guglielminetti, Ernest". Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse. Retrieved 13 February 2021.