1868 in science
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The year 1868 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Biology
- January 30 â Publication of Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (by John Murray in London), including his theory of heredity, which he calls pangenesis.
- Jules-Emile Planchon and colleagues propose Phylloxera as the cause of the Great French Wine Blight.[1]
- Roland Trimen reads a paper to the Linnaean Society explaining Batesian mimicry in African butterflies.[2][3]
- T. H. Huxley discovers what he thinks is primordial matter and names it Bathybius haeckelii. He admits his mistake in 1871.[4]
- The Granny Smith apple cultivar originates in Eastwood, New South Wales, Australia, from a chance seedling propagated by Maria Ann Smith (née Sherwood, 1799â1870).[5]
Chemistry
- August 18 â The element later named as helium is first detected in the spectrum of the Sun's chromosphere by French astronomer Jules Janssen during a total eclipse in Guntur, India, but assumed to be sodium.[6]
- October 20 â English astronomer Norman Lockyer observes and names the D3 Fraunhofer line in the solar spectrum and concludes that it is caused by a hitherto unidentified element which he later names helium.[7]
- Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron patents methods of color photography.[8]
Medicine
- Jean-Martin Charcot describes and names multiple sclerosis.[9][10]
- Adolph Kussmaul performs the first esophagogastroduodenoscopy on a living human.[11][12][13][14]
Paleontology
- March â French geologist Louis Lartet discovers the first identified skeletons of Cro-Magnon, the first anatomically modern humans (early Homo sapiens sapiens), at Abri de Crô-Magnon, a rock shelter at Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France.
Technology
- June 23 â The Sholes and Glidden typewriter is patented in the United States.[15]
- October 28 â American inventor Thomas Edison applies for his first patent, for a form of electronic voting machine.
- Ernest and Auguste Bollée first patent the Ãolienne Bollée wind turbine in France.[16]
- Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell's paper on governors[17] is a landmark in the mathematics of feedback and in control theory.
- Pendulum-and-hydrostat control for the Whitehead torpedo developed by Robert Whitehead.
Awards
Births
- January 9 â S. P. L. Sørensen (died 1939), Danish chemist.
- January 31 â Theodore William Richards (died 1928), American chemist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- February 7 â Aleen Cust (died 1937), Anglo-Irish veterinary surgeon.
- March 15 â Grace Chisholm Young (died 1944), English mathematician.
- March 22 â Robert Andrews Millikan (died 1953), American physicist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Physics.[19]
- April 4
- Philippa Fawcett (died 1948), English mathematician.
- Henrietta Swan Leavitt (died 1921), American astronomer[20]
- April 5 â Percy Furnivall (died 1938), English surgeon.
- April 8 â Herbert Spencer Jennings (died 1947), American zoologist.
- April 14 â Annie S. D. Maunder, née Russell (died 1947), Irish astronomer.
- April 28 â Georgy Voronoy (died 1908), Ukrainian mathematician.
- April 30 â J. B. Christopherson (died 1955), English physician.
- May 2 â Robert W. Wood (died 1955), American optical physicist.
- June 6 â Robert Falcon Scott (died 1912), English explorer.
- June 7 â John Sealy Townsend (died 1957), Irish mathematical physicist.[21]
- June 14 â Karl Landsteiner (died 1943), Austrian physiologist.
- July 4 â Henrietta Swan Leavitt (died 1921), American astronomer.[22]
- October 23 â Frederick W. Lanchester (died 1946), English automotive engineer.
- November 8 â Felix Hausdorff (died 1942), German mathematician.
- November 14 â Karl Landsteiner (died 1943), Austrian-born physiologist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.[23]
- November 15 â Emil RacoviÈÄ (died 1947), Romanian biologist, speleologist and explorer.
- November 17 â Korbinian Brodmann (died 1918), German neurologist.
- December 5 â Arnold Sommerfeld (died 1951), German theoretical physicist.[24]
- December 9 â Fritz Haber (died 1934), German chemist.[25]
Deaths
- February 10 â Sir David Brewster, Scottish physicist (born 1781)[26]
- February 11 â Léon Foucault (born 1819), French physicist.[27]
- February 24 â John Herapath (born 1790), English physicist.
- May 22 â Julius Plücker (born 1801), German mathematician and physicist.
- June 25 â Alexander Mitchell (born 1780), Irish engineer and inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse.
- June 29 â Sir John Lillie, British army officer, entrepreneur and inventor (born 1790)
- July 15 â William T. G. Morton (born 1819), American dentist.
- August 29 â Christian Friedrich Schönbein, German chemist and inventor of the fuel cell (born 1799)[28]
- September 26 â August Ferdinand Möbius (born 1790), German mathematician and astronomer[29]
- December 25 â Linus Yale, Jr. (born 1821), American engineer and inventor.[30]
- December 31 â James David Forbes (born 1809), Scottish-born physicist, glaciologist and seismologist.