1864 in science
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The year 1864 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.
Astronomy
- May 14 â The Orgueil meteorite, composed of carbonaceous chondrite, falls in southwestern France.
- August 29 â 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 â John Alexander Reina Newlands produces the first periodic table of the elements.[5]
- November 27 â Barbituric acid is first synthesized, by German chemist Adolf von Baeyer.
- Lothar Meyer develops an early version of the periodic table, with 28 elements organized by valence.[6][7]
- Cato Maximilian Guldberg and Peter Waage, building on Claude Louis Berthollet's ideas, propose the law of mass action.[8][9][10]
Conservation
- June 30 â The Yosemite Grant is created in the United States.[11]
Mathematics
- Alfred Enneper publishes his parametrization of the Enneper surface in connection with minimal surface theory.[12]
Physics
- December 8 â 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.[13]
Technology
- February 17 â 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).[14]
- December 8 â 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.[15]
- Oriel Chambers, Liverpool, England, the world's first metal-framed glass curtain walled building, designed by Peter Ellis (architect), is built.[16]
- Nicolaus Otto and Eugen Langen produce a free piston gas atmospheric engine.
- Henry Roscoe and Robert Bunsen carry out what is reputed to be the first flashlight photography, using magnesium as a light source.[17]
- Possible date â Siegfried Marcus builds the first motorized cart, in Vienna.
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[18]
- Wollaston Medal for Geology: Roderick Murchison
Births
- January (prob. date) â George Washington Carver (died 1943), African American agricultural botanist.
- January 13 â Wilhelm Wien (died 1928), German physicist.
- February 28 â Oswald Bertram Lower (died 1925), Australian lepidopterist.
- March 12 â W. H. R. Rivers (died 1922), English psychiatrist.
- March 15 â Carl Edvard Johansson (died 1943), Swedish metrologist.
- April 21 â Max Weber (died 1920), German sociologist.
- June 14 â Alois Alzheimer (died 1915), German neuroscientist.
- June 25 â Walther Nernst (died 1941), German chemist.
- June 22 â Hermann Minkowski (died 1909), Lithuanian-German mathematician.
- September 8 (O.S. August 27) â Jakob Johann von Uexküll (died 1944), Baltic German pioneer of biosemiotics.[19]
- December 1 â Carsten Borchgrevink (died 1934), Norwegian Antarctic explorer.
Deaths
- January 14 â Father Nicholas Callan (born 1799), Irish physicist.
- March 21 â Luke Howard (born 1772), English meteorologist and manufacturing chemist.
- May 3 â William Lobb (born 1809), English plant collector.
- May 5 â Elizabeth Andrew Warren (born 1786), Cornish botanist and marine algolologist.
- May 29 â Johann Georg Bodmer (born 1786), Swiss mechanical engineer and inventor.
- November 23 â Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (born 1793), Baltic German-born astronomer.
- December 8 â George Boole (born 1815), English-born mathematician.
- December 12 â John Fowler (born 1826), English agricultural engineer.