1872 in science

The year 1872 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Chemistry

• Robert Chesebrough patents Vaseline in the United States ^[1]
• Eugen Baumann rediscovers polyvinyl chloride
• Charles-Adolphe Wurtz discovers the aldol reaction

Conservation

• March 1 – Yellowstone National Park is established in the United States, the world's first national park ^{[2] [3]}

Exploration

• May 13–September 26 – Benjamin Leigh Smith's 1872 expedition to Jan Mayen and Svalbard ^[4]
• December 21 – Challenger expedition: HMS Challenger (1858) sails from Portsmouth in England on the 4-year scientific expedition that lays the foundation for the science of oceanography ^[5]

Mathematics

• Richard Dedekind publishes Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen, a theory of irrational numbers ^[6]
• Felix Klein produces the Erlangen program on geometries ^[6]

Medicine

• February 15 – George Huntington makes the first detailed description of Huntington's disease, in Middleport, Ohio ^{[7] [8] [9]}
• Moritz Kaposi describes Kaposi's sarcoma ^{[10] [11]} and the manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus
• Ferdinand Monoyer proposes the dioptre as a unit for measuring the optical power of a lens ^[12]

Physics

• Ludwig Boltzmann states the Boltzmann equation for the temporal development of distribution functions in phase space, and publishes his H-theorem ^[13]

Technology

• April 1 – English hangman William Marwood first uses his technique of the long drop (on uxoricide William Frederick Horry at Lincoln Castle) ^[14]
• April 2 – George Brayton obtains a United States patent for a constant pressure internal combustion engine, initially using vaporized gas, and marketed as 'Brayton's Ready Motor' ^{[15] [16]}
• John Hopkinson proposes the group flash system for distinguishing lighthouses ^[17]
• Reverend C. M. Ramus of Sussex, England, devises the single-step hydroplane hull ^[18]

Institutions

• October 1 – the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session
• The Polytechnic Museum in Moscow is founded ^[19]

Publications

• May – the magazine Popular Science is first published in the United States
• Charles Darwin publishes The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

Awards

• Copley Medal: Friedrich Woehler ^[20]
• Wollaston Medal for geology: James Dwight Dana

Births

• April 5 – Samuel Cate Prescott (died 1962), American food scientist and microbiologist
• April 21 - Charles Gandy (died 1943), French physician.
• May 6 – Willem de Sitter (died 1934), Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer
• May 21 – Henry E. Warren (died 1957), American inventor
• May 31 – Charles Greeley Abbot (died 1973), American astrophysicist
• August 1 – Solomon Carter Fuller (died 1953), Liberian-born psychiatrist
• September 23 – Marie Depage (died in sinking of the RMS Lusitania 1915), Belgian nurse
• October 4 – Ernest Fourneau (died 1949), French medicinal chemist

Deaths

• March 8 – Priscilla Susan Bury (born 1799), English botanist ^[21]
• April 2 – Samuel Morse (born 1791), American inventor
• May 6 – George Robert Gray (born 1808), English zoologist
• August 11 – Sir Andrew Smith (born 1797), Scottish-born military surgeon, explorer, ethnologist and zoologist
• August 22 – Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (born 1787), French physician
• November 7 – Alfred Clebsch (born 1833), German mathematician
• December 6 – Félix Archimède Pouchet (born 1800), French scientist
• December 24 – William John Macquorn Rankine (born 1820), Scottish physicist
• Anne Elizabeth Ball (born 1808), Irish psychologist

References

1. U.S. Patent 127,568.
2. "Yellowstone, the First National Park". Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
3. U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 17, Chap. 24, pp. 32-33. "An Act to set apart a certain Tract of Land lying near the Head-waters of the Yellowstone River as a public Park." From The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 collection, Library of Congress.
4. Capelotti, P. J. (2008). "Benjamin Leigh Smith's second Arctic expedition: Svalbard and Jan Mayen, 1872". Polar Record . 44 (3): 255–264. Bibcode:2008PoRec..44..255C. doi:10.1017/S0032247408007444. S2CID   145350642.
5. Rice, A. L. (1999). "The Challenger Expedition". Understanding the Oceans: Marine Science in the Wake of HMS Challenger. London: Routledge. pp. 27–48. ISBN   978-1-85728-705-9 . Retrieved 8 May 2011.
6. Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. ISBN   978-1-84724-008-8.
7. Huntington, G. (1872-04-13). "On Chorea". Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia. 26 (15): 317–321.
8. Lanska, D. J. (2000). "George Huntington (1850–1916) and hereditary chorea". Journal of the History of the Neurosciences . 9 (1): 76–89. doi:10.1076/0964-704X(200004)9:1;1-2;FT076. PMID   11232352. S2CID   22659368.
9. Vale, Thiago Cardoso; Cardoso, Francisco (2015). "Chorea: A journey through history". Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements. 5: 1–6. doi:10.7916/D8WM1C98. PMC   4454991 . PMID   26056609.
10. Kaposi, Moriz (1872). "Idiopathisches multiples Pigmentsarkom der Haut". Archiv für Dermatologie und Syphilis. 4 (2): 265–73. doi:10.1007/bf01830024. S2CID   31438763. Translated as: Kaposi, M. (1982). "Idiopathic Multiple Pigmented Sarcoma of the Skin". CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 32 (6): 342–7. doi: 10.3322/canjclin.32.6.342 .
11. "Moriz Kohn Kaposi". Whonamedit? . Retrieved 2011-03-25.
12. Monoyer, F. (1872). "Sur l'introduction du système métrique dans le numérotage des verres de lunettes et sur le choix d'une unité de réfraction". Annales d'Oculistiques. 68: 101.
13. Encyclopaedia of Physics (2nd ed.). 1991.
14. Boase, George Clement (1893). "Marwood, William"  . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
15. Improvement in Gas-Engines (Patent no. 125166).
16. Borth, Christy (1945). Masters of Mass Production. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. p. 152.
17. Beare, T. H. (2004). "Hopkinson, John (1849–1898)" . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13758 . Retrieved 2011-06-02.(Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
18. "The Evolution of the Hydroplane". Flight . 6: 796. 1914-07-24. Retrieved 2012-01-09.
19. "History". Polytechnic Museum.
20. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
21. Lightman, Bernard (2004). Dictionary Of Nineteenth-Century of British Scientists Vol.1. Bristol: Thoemmes. p. 356. ISBN   978-1-85506-999-2.