1873 in science

The year 1873 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

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Chemistry

• Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff and Joseph Achille Le Bel, working independently, develop a model of chemical bonding that explains the chirality experiments of Pasteur and provides a physical cause for optical activity in chiral compounds^[1][2]

Exploration

• The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition discovers Franz-Josef Land

Mathematics

• Charles Hermite proves that the mathematical constant e is a transcendental number^[3]
• Henri Brocard introduces the Brocard points, Brocard triangle and Brocard circle^[3][4][5]

Meteorology

• September 15 – agreement for establishment of the International Meteorological Organization.^{[citation needed]}

Physics

• February 20 – English electrical engineer Willoughby Smith publishes his discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium^[6]
• June 14 – Johannes Diderik van der Waals defends his thesis, Over de Continuiteit van den Gas en Vloeistoftoestand (On the continuity of the gaseous and liquid state) at Leiden University; in this, he introduces the concepts of molecular volume and molecular attraction; gives a semi-quantitative description of the phenomena of condensation and critical temperatures; and derives the van der Waals equation^[7]
• September 22 – James Clerk Maxwell delivers a discourse on molecules to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Bradford^[8]
• December – J. Willard Gibbs describes the principle of Gibbs free energy^[9]
• James Clerk Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism first presents the partial differential equations known as Maxwell's equations which form the foundation of classical electrodynamics, optics and electric circuits
• Frederick Guthrie is the first to report observing thermionic emission^[10]

Physiology and medicine

• June 18 – Alice Vickery passes the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's examination, becoming the first qualified female pharmacist in the United Kingdom^[11]
• Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, is discovered by Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen. It is the first bacterium to be identified as pathogenic in humans^[12][13]
• English allergist Charles Harrison Blackley publishes Experimental Researches on the Causes and Nature of Catarrhus aestivus
• Camillo Golgi first publishes a demonstration of Golgi's method^[14]

Technology

• May 20 – Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss receive United States patent#139121 for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim jeans
• Carl von Linde installs his first commercial refrigeration system, built by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg for the Spaten Brewery and using dimethyl ether as the refrigerant
• Christopher Miner Spencer introduces the fully automatic turret lathe^[15]

Awards

• Copley Medal: Hermann Helmholtz^[16]
• Wollaston Medal for geology: Philip de Malpas Grey Egerton

Births

• February 11 – Louis Charles Christopher Krieger (died 1940), American mycologist
• February 12 – Barnum Brown (died 1963), American paleontologist
• March 5 – Thomas Harrison Montgomery, Jr. (died 1912), American zoologist and cell biologist
• April 25 – Félix d'Herelle (died 1949), French-Canadian microbiologist, a co-discoverer of bacteriophages
• June 28 – Alexis Carrel (died 1942), French surgeon, biologist and winner of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• June 30 – Friedrich Karl Georg Fedde (died 1942), German botanist
• July 7 – Sándor Ferenczi (died 1933), Hungarian psychoanalyst
• October 4 – Dimitrie Pompeiu (died 1954), Romanian mathematician
• October 9 – Karl Schwarzschild (died 1916), German astronomer and physicist

Deaths

• January 27 – Adam Sedgwick (born 1785), English geologist
• February 1 – Matthew Fontaine Maury (born 1806), American oceanographer
• April 18 – Justus von Liebig (born 1803), German chemist
• March 10 – John Torrey (born 1796), American botanist
• March 30 – Bénédict Morel (born 1809), French psychiatrist
• September 15 – Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko (born 1844), Russian naturalist
• September 24 – John Thurnam (born 1810), English psychiatrist and ethnologist
• October 17 – Robert McClure (born 1807), British Arctic explorer
• December 14 – Louis Agassiz (born 1807), Swiss-American zoologist and geologist