1852 in science

The year 1852 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Aeronautics

Giffard airship

• September 24 – French engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip, from Paris to Trappes.

Astronomy

• September 19 – Annibale de Gasparis discovers the asteroid 20 Massalia from the north dome of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples.

Biology

• October 5 – American apiarist L. L. Langstroth patents the Langstroth hive for the cultivation of honey bees.
• Last recognised sighting of a great auk, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. ^[1]

Chemistry

• August Beer proposes Beer's law, which explains the relationship between the composition of a mixture and the amount of light it will absorb. Based partly on earlier work by Pierre Bouguer and Johann Heinrich Lambert, it establishes the analytical technique known as spectrophotometry. ^[2]

Mathematics

• October 23 – Francis Guthrie poses the four colour problem to Augustus De Morgan. ^{[3] [4]}

Medicine

• January 15 – Nine representatives of Hebrew charitable organizations come together to form what will become the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.
• February 15 – The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient. ^[5]

Technology

• March 2 – The first American experimental steam fire engine, designed by Alexander Bonner Latta, is tested. ^[6]
• August 23 – George Jennings receives a U.K. patent for improvements to the flush toilet. ^[7]
• The mechanical semaphore line in France is superseded by the electric telegraph.
• Captain E. M. Boxer of the Royal Arsenal devises an improvement to the shrapnel shell by insertion of an iron diaphragm, preventing premature ignition. ^[8]
• French physicist Léon Foucault (1819–1868) makes the first gyroscope for scientific use

Awards

• Copley Medal: Alexander von Humboldt ^[9]
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Henry Fitton

Births

• March 25 – Charles Loomis Dana (died 1935), American neurologist.
• April 10 – Arthur Vierendeel (died 1940), Belgian civil engineer.
• May 1 – Santiago Ramón y Cajal (died 1934), Spanish neuroscientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• August 4 – Catharine van Tussenbroek (died 1925), Dutch physician.
• August 30 – Jacobus van 't Hoff (died 1911), Dutch chemist.
• September 9 – John Henry Poynting (died 1914), English physicist, discoverer of the Poynting–Robertson effect and the Poynting vector.
• September 15 – Edward Bouchet (died 1918), African American physicist.
• September 23 – William Stewart Halsted (died 1922), American surgeon.
• September 28 – Isis Pogson (died 1945), English astronomer and meteorologist.
• October 2 – William Ramsay (died 1916), Scottish winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• October 6 – Bruno Abakanowicz (died 1900), Polish mathematician, inventor and electrical engineer.
• October 9 – Hermann Emil Fischer (died 1919), German winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• November 12 - Xavier Arnozan (died 1928), French physician. ^[10]
• December 13 – Charles E. de M. Sajous (died 1929), American endocrinologist.
• December 15 – Henri Becquerel (died 1908), French physicist.

Deaths

Ada Lovelace shortly before her death in 1852

• January 1 – John George Children (born 1777), English chemist, mineralogist and entomologist.
• January 6 – Louis Braille (born 1809), French inventor.
• January 13 - Jean-Nicolas Gannal (born 1791), French pharmacist, chemist, and inventor.
• August 15 – Johan Gadolin (born 1760), Finnish chemist.
• August 24 – Sarah Guppy (born 1770), English inventor.
• September 4 – William MacGillivray (born 1796), Scottish naturalist and ornithologist.
• September 8 – Anna Maria Walker (born 1778), Scottish botanist.
• October 9 – Thomas Frederick Colby (born 1784), English cartographer.
• November 10 – Gideon Mantell (born 1790), English paleontologist.
• November 27 – Augusta Ada King (née Byron), Countess of Lovelace (born 1815), English computing pioneer.

References

1. BirdLife International. (2016). "Pinguinus impennis". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species . 2016 e.T22694856A93472944. doi: 10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22694856A93472944.en . Retrieved 20 December 2020.
2. "Lambert-Beer Law". Sigrist-Photometer AG. 2007-03-07. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
3. Wilson, Robin (2002). Four Colors Suffice . London: Penguin Books. p.  18. ISBN   0-691-11533-8.
4. Cayley, Arthur (1879). "On the colourings of maps". Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. 1 (4). Blackwell: 259–261. doi:10.2307/1799998. JSTOR   1799998.
5. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN   0-14-102715-0.
6. King, William T. (1896). History of the American Steam Fire-Engine.
7. No. 14,273. "Innovations in toilet design". The National Archives. Retrieved 2024-11-01.
8. Marshall, A. (1920). "The Invention and Development of the Shrapnel Shell" (PDF). The Field Artillery Journal: 12–18. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-06-17. Retrieved 2012-03-08.
9. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
10. "Notice no. 19800035/241/31985". Base Léonore (in French).