1864 in science
From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
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The year 1864 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.
Contents
Astronomy
- August 29 – William Huggins is the first to take the spectrum of a planetary nebula when he analyzes NGC 6543.[1]
Botany
- English botanist Richard Spruce completes a 15-year expedition to the Andes and Amazon Basin during which he has collected more than 30,000 plant specimens.[2][3][4]
Chemistry
- August 20 – John Alexander Reina Newlands produces the first periodic table of the elements.[5]
- Lothar Meyer develops an early version of the periodic table, with 28 elements organized by valence.[6]
- Cato Maximilian Guldberg and Peter Waage, building on Claude Louis Berthollet's ideas, propose the law of mass action.[7][8][9]
Conservation
- June 30 – The Yosemite Grant is created in the United States.[10]
Mathematics
- Alfred Enneper publishes his parametrization of the Enneper surface in connection with minimal surface theory.[11]
Physics
- December 8 – James Clerk Maxwell presents his paper A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field to the Royal Society in London, treating light as an electromagnetic wave and presenting Maxwell's equations.[12]
Technology
- February 17 – In the American Civil War, the tiny Confederate hand-propelled submarine H. L. Hunley sinks the USS Housatonic using a spar torpedo in Charleston Harbor, becoming the first submarine to sink an enemy ship (although the submarine and her crew of eight are also lost).[13]
- December 8 – The Clifton Suspension Bridge across the Bristol Avon in England, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and completed as a memorial to him, opens to traffic.[14]
- Oriel Chambers, Liverpool, England, the world's first metal-framed glass curtain walled building, designed by Peter Ellis (architect), is built.[15]
- Henry Roscoe and Robert Bunsen carry out what is reputed to be the first flashlight photography, using magnesium as a light source.[16]
Zoology
- The species Homo neanderthalensis is formally described by William King.
- The Central Park Zoo opens in New York City as a menagerie.
Awards
- Copley Medal: Charles Darwin
- Wollaston Medal for Geology: Roderick Murchison
Births
- January (prob. date) – George Washington Carver (died 1943), African American agricultural botanist.
- January 13 – Wilhelm Wien (died 1928), German physicist.
- March 12 – W. H. R. Rivers (died 1922), English psychiatrist.
- April 21 – Max Weber (died 1920), German sociologist.
- June 14 – Alois Alzheimer (died 1915), German neuroscientist.
- June 25 – Walther Nernst (died 1941), German chemist.
- June 22 – Hermann Minkowski (died 1909), Lithuanian-German mathematician.
- December 1 – Carsten Borchgrevink (died 1934), Norwegian Antarctic explorer.
Deaths
- January 14 – Father Nicholas Callan (born 1799), physicist.
- March 21 – Luke Howard (born 1772), meteorologist and manufacturing chemist.
- May 3 – William Lobb (born 1809), plant collector.
- November 23 – Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve (born 1793), astronomer.
- December 8 – George Boole (born 1815), mathematician.
- December 12 – John Fowler (born 1826), agricultural engineer.
References
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