1826 in science

The year 1826 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

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Astronomy

• Mary Somerville presents a paper on "The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum" to the Royal Society in London.

Chemistry

• Otto Unverdorben first isolates aniline, by destructive distillation of indigo;^[1] he calls it Crystallin.
• Antoine Jerome Balard isolates bromine.
• Pierre Jean Robiquet isolates the dye alizarin.^[2]
• Michael Faraday determines the chemical formula of naphthalene.

Exploration

• May 22 – HMS Beagle departs on her first voyage from Plymouth for a hydrographic survey of the Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego regions of South America.
• Hyacinthe de Bougainville completes a three-year global circumnavigation.

Mathematics

• Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik is founded by August Leopold Crelle in Berlin.
• February 23 – Nikolai Lobachevsky first presents his system of non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry.

Physiology and medicine

• Johannes Peter Müller publishes his first important works, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtsinns ("On the comparative physiology of sight", Leipzig) and Über die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen ("On visual hallucination", Coblenz), making a first statement of the law of specific nerve energies.

Technology

• January 30 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, built by engineer Thomas Telford, is opened between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales.^[3]
• April 1 – American inventor Samuel Morey patents a compressionless internal combustion engine in the United States.^[4][5][6]
• June – Nicéphore Niépce produces the first photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras.^[7]
• Benoit Fourneyron develops an efficient outward-flow water turbine.
• James Sharp of Northampton in England patents a practical form of gas stove.

Zoology

• Karl Ernst von Baer discovers the mammalian ovum.^[8][9][10]
• The Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer first describes the Asiatic lion under the name Felis leo persicus.^[11]
• The Zoological Society of London is founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.

Awards

• Copley Medal: James South^[12]

Births

• January 15 – Marie Pasteur (died 1910), French chemist.
• May 26 – Richard Carrington (died 1875), English astronomer.
• June 26 – Morgan Crofton (died 1915), Irish mathematician.
• July 7 – John Fowler (died 1864), English agricultural engineer.
• July 13 – Stanislao Cannizzaro (died 1910), Italian chemist.
• August 21 – Carl Gegenbaur (died 1903), German anatomist.^[13]
• September 17 – Bernhard Riemann (died 1866), German mathematician.
• October 8 – Emily Blackwell (died 1910), American physician.
• Alphonse de Polignac (died 1863), French mathematician.

Deaths

• January 3 – Marie Le Masson Le Golft (born 1750), French naturalist.
• January 6 – John Farey (born 1766), English geologist.
• March 28 - Jean-Baptiste Dumangin (born 1744), French physician.^[14]
• June 7 – Joseph von Fraunhofer (born 1787), German physicist.
• June 30 - Clément Joseph Tissot (born 1747), French physician and physiotherapist.^[15]
• July 4 – Thomas Jefferson (born 1743), Founding Father and 3rd President of the United States and inventor.
• July 22 – Giuseppe Piazzi (born 1746), Italian astronomer.
• August 13 - René Laennec (born 1781), French physician and musician.^[16]
• September 6 - Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri (born 1772), Italian surgeon.^[17]
• October 25 – Philippe Pinel (born 1745), French psychiatrist.
• November 23 – Johann Elert Bode (born 1747), German astronomer.
• November 24 - Clarke Abel (born 1780), British surgeon and naturalist.^[18]