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.

Exploration

• August 7 – Amalie Dietrich arrives in Australia to begin a decade of collecting specimens in natural history and anthropology
• The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition discovers Franz-Josef Land

Mathematics

• Charles Hermite proves that the mathematical constant e is a transcendental number
• Henri Brocard introduces the Brocard points, Brocard triangle and Brocard circle

Meteorology

• September 15 – agreement for establishment of the International Meteorological Organization

Physics

• February 20 – English electrical engineer Willoughby Smith publishes his discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium
• 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.
• September 22 – James Clerk Maxwell delivers a discourse on molecules to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Bradford
• 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

Physiology and medicine

• June 18 – Alice Vickery passes the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's examination, becoming the first qualified female pharmacist in the United Kingdom
• 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.

Technology

• May 20 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis 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

Awards

• Copley Medal: Hermann Helmholtz
• Wollaston Medal for geology: Philip de Malpas Grey Egerton

Births

• February 11 – Louis Charles Christopher Krieger (died 1940), American mycologist
• 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
• 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), geologist
• February 1 – Matthew Fontaine Maury (born 1806), oceanographer
• April 18 – Justus von Liebig (born 1803), chemist
• March 10 – John Torrey (born 1796), botanist
• March 30 – Bénédict Morel (born 1809), psychiatrist
• September 15 – Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko (born 1844), naturalist
• December 14 – Louis Agassiz (born 1807), zoologist and geologist