1858 in science
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The year 1858 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- June 2 â Donati's Comet, the first comet to be photographed, is discovered by Giovanni Battista Donati; it remains visible for several months afterwards.
- September 10 â George Mary Searle discovers the asteroid 55 Pandora from the Dudley Observatory near Albany, New York.[1]
Biology
- Publication of Darwin's theory of evolution:
- June 18 â Charles Darwin receives papers from Alfred Russel Wallace setting out the latter's theory of natural selection which he forwards to Charles Lyell.
- July 1 â Darwin and Wallace's papers on their theories of evolution, On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection (submitted with the support of Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker) are read by John Joseph Bennett to a meeting of the Linnean Society of London. They are first published on August 20.
- William Herschel initiates fingerprinting as a means of identification, in Bengal.[2]
- Rudolf Virchow publishes Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre: 20 Vorlesungen, gehalten während der Monate Februar, März und April 1858 im Pathologischen Institut zu Berlin.
- George Bentham's Handbook of the British flora is published. This will be in use (in editions edited by Joseph Dalton Hooker) for a century.
Chemistry
- May 28 â Erasmus Bond (owner of Pitt & Co. of London) patents tonic water, manufactured using quinine.[3][4]
Exploration
- February 13 â Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke become the first Europeans to discover Lake Tanganyika.[5]
- May 14 â Dr David Livingstone's 6-year Second Zambesi Expedition, under the patronage of the Royal Geographical Society, arrives at the African coast with the prefabricated iron paddle steamer Ma Robert.[6]
- August 3 â John Hanning Speke discovers Lake Victoria, source of the River Nile.[5]
Mathematics
- The Möbius strip is discovered independently by German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing.[7][8][9]
- Arthur Cayley publishes "A memoir on the theory of matrices", introducing the modern concept of the matrix in mathematics.[10][11][12]
- In Luxor, Egypt, the Rhind papyrus is found (named for Alexander Henry Rhind, the discoverer; it is sometimes called the Ahmes papyrus for the scribe who wrote it around 1650 BC).
Physiology and medicine
- August 2 â Medical Act 1858 passed "to Regulate the Qualifications of Practitioners in Medicine and Surgery" in the United Kingdom.
- December 1 â The recently formed Odontological Society of London opens the Dental Hospital of London in England.[13]
- First publication of Gray's Anatomy.
- Publication in London of Thomas B. Peacock's On Malformations, &c., of the Human Heart, with original cases which becomes a standard cardiology textbook.[14]
- French pediatrician Eugène Bouchut develops a new technique for non-surgical orotracheal intubation to bypass laryngeal obstruction resulting from a diphtheria-related pseudomembrane.[15]
Psychiatry
- First treatise on postpartum psychiatric disturbances, by Louis-Victor Marcé, MD.[16]
Technology
- January 31 â I. K. Brunel's SS Great Eastern, the largest ship built to date, is launched on the River Thames using Tangye hydraulic rams.[17]
- August â The first aerial photography is carried out by Nadar from a moored balloon in France using the collodion process.[18]
- August 16 â Official inauguration of the transatlantic telegraph cable; however, it fails on September 1.
- Mirror galvanometer invented by William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin.
- Hoffmann kiln patented in Germany by Friedrich Hoffmann for continuous production brickmaking.
Awards
Births
- January 2 â Bernard Sachs (died 1944), American neurologist.
- January 9 â Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, née Knight (died 1934), American botanist.
- January 28 â Eugène Dubois (died 1940), Dutch paleoanthropologist.
- February 7 â Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate (died 1931), Dutch anthropologist.
- March 18 â Rudolf Diesel (died 1913), German mechanical engineer.
- March 27 â Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer (died 1945), German physician and bacteriologist.
- April 23 â Max Planck (died 1947), German theoretical physicist.
- May 19 â Thomas Allinson (died 1918), English physician and dietetic reformer.
- May 28 â T. H. E. C. Espin (died 1934), English astronomer, scientist and clergyman.
- July 9 â Franz Boas (died 1942), German-born anthropologist.
- August 11 â Christiaan Eijkman (died 1930), Dutch physiologist.
- August 19 â Ellen Willmott (died 1934), English horticulturist.
- August 27 â Giuseppe Peano (died 1932), Italian mathematician.
- October 4 â Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin (died 1935), Banat-born physicist.
- November 1 â Ludwig Struve (died 1920), Russian astronomer.
- November 30 â Jagadish Chandra Bose (died 1937), Bengali physicist.
- Laura Forster (died 1917), Australian physician.
Deaths
- January 4 â Amelia Griffiths (born 1768), British phycologist.
- April 28 â Johannes Peter Müller (born 1801), German physiologist.
- June 10 â Robert Brown (born 1773), Scottish botanist.
- June 28 â Jane Marcet (born 1769), British popular science writer.
- November 8 â George Peacock (born 1791), English mathematician.
- December 10 â Joseph Paul Gaimard (born 1793), French naval surgeon and naturalist.
- December 16 â Richard Bright (born 1789), English physician.