1823 in science

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The year 1823 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Olbers' paradox is described by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers.
• Cambridge Observatory established in England.
• December 29 – Great Comet of 1823 first observed.

Chemistry

• June 17 – Charles Macintosh patents a method of rubberizing fabric to waterproof it.

Exploration

• February 20 – James Weddell's expedition to Antarctica reaches latitude 74°15' S and longitude 34°16'45" W, the most southerly position that will be attained for more than 80 years.

Medicine

• October 5 – The Lancet founded by Thomas Wakley.
• Theodric Romeyn Beck publishes the first significant American book on forensic medicine, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence in Albany, New York.

Paleontology

• January 23 – In a cave on the Gower Peninsula of Wales, William Buckland inspects the "Red Lady of Paviland", the first identification of a prehistoric (male) human burial. The bones, discovered on December 21 last, are with those of the woolly mammoth, proving that the two had coexisted.

Physics

• William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet.

Technology

• December 6 – English inventor Samuel Brown obtains his first patent for a hydrogen fuelled compressionless atmospheric gas vacuum engine, the first internal combustion engine to be applied industrially.
• First use of a Fresnel lens in a lighthouse optic, at the Cordouan lighthouse on the Gironde estuary.
• First permanent wire cable suspension bridge, Pont Saint Antoine in Geneva, by Guillaume Henri Dufour, of two 40 m spans.
• French officer Henri-Joseph Paixhans develops the Paixhans gun, the first naval artillery to fire explosive shells.

Publications

• Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences first published.

Awards

• Copley Medal: John Pond

Births

• January 8 – Alfred Russel Wallace (died 1913), British naturalist who devises the theory of natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin.
• February 3 – Spencer Fullerton Baird (died 1887), American ornithologist and ichthyologist.
• December 22 – Jean Henri Fabre (died 1915), French entomologist.

Deaths

• January 26 – Edward Jenner (born 1749), English inventor of the vaccine.
• September 23 – Matthew Baillie (born 1761), British pathologist