1896 in science

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The year 1896 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Chemistry

• Svante Arrhenius formulates the "greenhouse law" and becomes the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes are large enough to cause global warming through the greenhouse effect.

Earth sciences

• June 15 – The 1896 Sanriku earthquake of 7.2 surface wave magnitude and tsunami in Japan kill 27,000.

Exploration

• August – Conclusion of Nansen's Fram expedition.

Mathematics

• The prime number theorem on the distribution of primes is proved.
• Charles L. Dodgson publishes the first part of Symbolic Logic.
• Karl Pearson publishes significant contributions to correlation and regression.

Microbiology

• Ernest Duchesne discovers the antibiotic properties of penicillin as part of his doctoral research, but this is not followed up at this time.

Physics

• March 1 – French physicist Henri Becquerel discovers the principle of radioactive decay when he exposes photographic plates to uranium.

Physiology and medicine

• Antoine Marfan first describes the symptoms of Marfan syndrome.
• An improved sphygmomanometer, for the measurement of blood pressure, is described by Scipione Riva-Rocci.

Technology

• Thomas Ellis Brown produces an innovative design of rolling bascule bridge for Brooklyn.
• Jesse W. Reno produces the first working escalator ("inclined elevator"), installed at Coney Island, Brooklyn.
• Gottlieb Daimler produces the first truck.
• Captain Neville Bertie-Clay, Superintendent of the British Army arsenal at Dum Dum in Bengal, invents an expanding bullet.
• December 11 – William Preece introduces Guglielmo Marconi's work in wireless telegraphy to the general public at a lecture, "Telegraphy without Wires", at the Toynbee Hall in London.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Karl Gegenbaur
• Wollaston Medal for geology: Eduard Suess

Births

• January 3 – Jay Laurence Lush (died 1982), American livestock geneticist.
• February 2 – Kazimierz Kuratowski (died 1980), Polish mathematician.
• February 14 – Arthur Milne (died 1950), English space physicist.
• March 29 – Wilhelm Ackermann (died 1962), German mathematician.
• June 1 – Shintaro Uda (died 1976), Japanese electrical engineer.
• July 16 – Otmar von Verschuer (died 1969), German eugenicist.
• August 15 – Gerty Cori (née Radnitz) (died 1957), Prague-born winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Priscilla Fairfield Bok (died 1975), American astronomer.

Deaths

• June 23 – Joseph Prestwich (born 1812), English geologist.
• July 13 – Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz (born 1829), organic chemist.
• August 10 – Otto Lilienthal (born 1848), aviation pioneer.
• September 18 – Hippolyte Fizeau (born 1819), physicist.
• October 21 – James Henry Greathead (born 1844), British civil engineer.
• October 27 – H. Newell Martin (born 1848), British physiologist.
• November 3 – Eugen Baumann (born 1846), chemist.
• November 22 – George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. (born 1859), American civil engineer.
• December 10 – Alfred Nobel (born 1833), inventor.