1887 in science

The year 1887 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• April – Carte du Ciel project initiated by Paris Observatory director Amédée Mouchez.
• Theodor von Oppolzer's Canon der Finsternisse , a compilation of the 8,000 solar and 5,200 lunar eclipses from 1200 BC until 2161 AD, is published posthumously. ^[1]

Biology

• Jean Pierre Mégnin publishes Faune des Tombeaux ("Fauna of the Tombs"), the founding work of modern forensic entomology. ^[2]
• Sergei Winogradsky discovers the first known form of lithotrophy during his research with Beggiatoa . ^[3]
• The Petri dish is created by German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri.

Chemistry

• Amphetamine is first synthesized in Germany by Romanian chemist Lazăr Edeleanu, who names it phenylisopropylamine.
• Otto Schott produces 'Normalthermometerglas' (family of Borosilicate glass) for the first time.

Cartography

• Guyou hemisphere-in-a-square projection developed by Émile Guyou. ^[4]

Climate

• January 28 – In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, in the United States, the largest snowflakes on record are reported. They are 15 inches (38 cm) wide and 8 inches (20 cm) thick. ^[5]
• September 28 – Start of the Yellow River floods in China: 900,000 dead.

Conservation

• June 23 – The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada, creating that nation's first national park, Banff National Park. ^[6]

Earth sciences

• February 23 – The French Riviera is hit by a large earthquake, killing around 2,000 along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
• In Hawaii, the Mauna Loa volcano eruptions subside, having begun in 1843. During the 1887 eruption, about 2½ million tons (2.3 million metric tons) of lava per hour pours out, covering an area of 29 km².

Linguistics

Anne Sullivan

• March 3 – Anne Sullivan begins to teach language to the deaf and blind Helen Keller.
• July 26 – L. L. Zamenhof publishes Lingvo internacia ("International language") under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto". ^[7]

Mathematics

• Joseph Louis François Bertrand rediscovers Bertrand's ballot theorem. ^[8]
• Henri Poincaré provides a solution to the three-body problem.

Medicine

• January 11 – Louis Pasteur's anti-rabies treatment is defended in the French Academy of Medicine by Dr. Joseph Grancher.
• August – The U.S. National Institutes of Health is founded at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, NY, as the Laboratory of Hygiene.
• October 1 – Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese founded by Patrick Manson. ^[9]
• Paediatrician Samuel Gee gives the first modern-day description of coeliac disease in children in a lecture at Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children in London.> ^{[10] [11]}
• Surgeon Franz König publishes "Über freie Körper in den Gelenken" in the journal Deutsche Zeitschrift für Chirurgie, first describing (and naming) the disease Osteochondritis dissecans .
• The Hospitals Association establishes the first (non-statutory and voluntary) register of nurses in the United Kingdom.

Physics

Heinrich Hertz

• November – The Michelson–Morley experiment is performed, indicating that the speed of light is independent of motion.
• Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect on the production and reception of electromagnetic waves in radio, an important step towards the understanding of the quantum nature of light.

Psychology

• November – G. Stanley Hall founds The American Journal of Psychology .
• Richard Hodgson and S. J. Davey, in the course of investigations into popular belief in parapsychology, publish one of the first descriptions of eyewitness unreliability. ^[12]

Technology

• March 8 – Everett Horton of Connecticut patents a fishing rod of telescoping steel tubes.
• March 13 – Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs.
• June 8 – Herman Hollerith receives a U.S. patent for his punched card calculator.
• July – James Blyth operates the first working wind turbine at Marykirk in Scotland. ^{[13] [14]}
• July 19 – Dorr Eugene Felt receives the first U.S. patent for his comptometer. ^[15]
• August – Anna Connelly patents a fire escape. ^[16]
• October 18 – Jacob Fitzgerald and William H. Silver are granted a U.S. patent for a "potato masher and fruit crusher", a form of potato ricer. ^[17]
• November 8 – Emile Berliner is granted a U.S. patent for his Gramophone. ^[18]
• Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick invents the contact lens, made of a type of brown glass. ^[19]
• English engineer James Atkinson invents his "Cycle Engine".
• Mexican general Manuel Mondragón patents the Mondragón rifle, the world's first automatic rifle. ^[20]
• Alfred Yarrow completes the first practical high-pressure water-tube Yarrow boiler, for a torpedo boat. ^[21]

Organizations

• March 7 – North Carolina State University is established as North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
• October 3 – Florida A&M University opens its doors in Tallahassee, Florida.

Publications

• Publication in Barcelona of Enrique Gaspar's El anacronópete, the first work of fiction to feature a time machine. ^[22]

Awards

• June – William Armstrong created 1st Baron Armstrong of Cragside, the first engineer to be raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom
• Copley Medal: Joseph Dalton Hooker ^[23]
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: John Whitaker Hulke

Births

• January 7 – Kurt Schneider (died 1967), German psychiatrist.
• January 15 – Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr. (died 1969), American conservationist.
• January 28 – Edmund Jaeger (died 1983), American naturalist.
• April 20 – Margaret Newton (died 1971), Canadian plant pathologist.
• June 22 – Julian Huxley (died 1975), English biologist and populariser of science.
• July 30 – Felix Andries Vening Meinesz (died 1966), Dutch geophysicist.
• August 18 – Erwin Schrödinger (died 1961), Austrian physicist.
• September 26 – Barnes Wallis (died 1979), English aeronautical engineer.
• October 11 – María Teresa Ferrari (died 1956), Argentine physician.
• November 10 – Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu (died 1973), Romanian engineer.
• November 19 – James B. Sumner (died 1955), American winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• November 23 – Henry Moseley (killed 1915), English physicist.
• November 25 (November 13 Old Style) – Nikolai Vavilov (died 1943), Russian plant pathologist.
• December 13 – George Pólya (died 1985), Hungarian mathematician.
• December 22 – Srinivasa Ramanujan (died 1920), Indian mathematician.
• December 27 – Edward Andrade (died 1971), English physicist.

Deaths

• January 22 – Joseph Whitworth (born 1803), English mechanical engineer.
• February 26 – Anandi Gopal Joshi (born 1865), Indian physician.
• July 17 – Henry William Ravenel (born 1814), American botanist.
• July 18 – Dorothea Dix (born 1802), American mental health reformer.
• August 2 – Joseph-Louis Lambot (born 1814), French inventor of ferrocement.
• August 15 – Julius von Haast (born 1824), German geologist.
• August 19
  • Spencer Fullerton Baird (born 1823), American ornithologist and ichthyologist.
  • Alvan Clark (born 1804), American telescope manufacturer.
• October 7 (O.S. September 25) – Lev Tsenkovsky (born 1822), Russian biologist.
• October 17 – Gustav Kirchhoff (born 1824), German physicist.
• November 18 – Gustav Fechner (born 1801), German psychologist.

References

1. von Oppolzer, Th. Canon der Finsternisse. Vienna: Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei [= Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Math.-naturw. Kl., Bd. 52]; repr. with preface by Donald H. Menzel and English translation of the introduction by Owen Gingerich, New York: Dover Publications, 1962.
2. Klotzbach, H.; Krettek, R.; et al. (2004). "The history of forensic entomology in German-speaking countries". Forensic Science International. 144 (2–3): 259–263. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.503.3269 . doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2004.04.062. PMID   15364399.
3. Winogradsky, S. (1887). "Über Schwefelbakterien". Botanische Zeitung (45): 489–610.
4. Snyder, John P. (1993). Flattening the Earth. University of Chicago. ISBN   978-0-226-76746-8.
5. "Largest snowflake". guinnessworldrecords.com. Retrieved November 23, 2022.
6. "Canada Creates National Park". This Week in History Archives. Parks Canada. Archived from the original on 2004-03-18. Retrieved 2011-04-10.
7. Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah, eds. (2009). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. p. 375. ISBN   978-0-08-087774-7.
8. Feller, William (1968). An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications. Vol. 1 (3rd ed.). Wiley. p. 69.
9. "History & Development". The University of Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. 2006. Archived from the original on 2011-05-13. Retrieved 2011-04-05.
10. Gee, S. J. (1888). "On the Cœliac Affection". St Bartholomew's Hospital Report. 24: 17–20. Archived from the original on 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2025-08-01– via Wayback Machine.
11. Losowsky, M. S. (2008). "A History of Coeliac Disease". Digestive Diseases. 26 (2): 112–20. doi:10.1159/000116768. PMID   18431060.
12. "The Possibilities of Malobservation and Lapse of Memory from a Practical Point of View". Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 4 (Internetversion).
13. Price, Trevor J. (2004). "Blyth, James (1839–1906)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2014-04-16.(subscription or UK public library membership required)
14. Hardy, Chris (2010-07-06). "Renewable energy and role of Marykirk's James Blyth". The Courier (Dundee) . D. C. Thomson & Co.
15. U.S. Patent No. 366,945, filed July 6, 1886; second patent granted October 11, 1887: U.S. Patent No. 371,496, filed March 12, 1887.
16. "Anna Connelly's 1887 patent for a fire escape (Patent No. 368,816)". patents.google.com. US368816A. Retrieved November 23, 2022.
17. US371882A.
18. U.S. patent 372,786
19. Heitz, Robert. "The Kontaktbrille of Adolf Eugen Fick (1887)". XVIIIth Convention of the Julius-Hirschberg-Gesellschaft Oktober 14th–16th 2004 Innsbruck. Archived from the original on 2012-03-05. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
20. "Historic Firearm of the Month". Cruffler.com. March 2001. Retrieved 2013-07-05.
21. Borthwick, Alastair (1965). Yarrows: the first hundred years. Glasgow: Yarrows. pp. 36–37.
22. Westcott, Kathryn (2011-04-09). "HG Wells or Enrique Gaspar: Whose time machine was first?". BBC News . Retrieved 2011-04-09.
23. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 23 July 2020.