1822 in science

Biology

• "Rostocker Pfeilstorch", a white stork, is found in northern Germany with an arrow from central Africa through its neck, demonstrating the fact of bird migration.

Geology

• Georges Cuvier establishes new standards and methods in stratigraphy and paleontology.
• Gideon Mantell discovers the first fossil of the iguanodon.
• John Phillips and William Conybeare identify the Carboniferous Period.
• Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy identifies the Cretaceous Period. He also proposes the Jurassic System.

Mathematics

• July 3 – Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a mechanical forerunner of the modern computer for calculating logarithms and trigonometric functions. Construction of an operational version will proceed under British Government sponsorship 1823–32 but it will never be completed.
• Karl Feuerbach describes the nine-point circle of a triangle.
• William Farish of the University of Cambridge publishes a systematization of the rules for isometric drawing.

Medicine

• United States Army surgeon William Beaumont pioneers human gastric endoscopy on Alexis St. Martin.
• Scottish surgeon John Henry Wishart gives the first description in England of neurofibromatosis type II.
• German poet and physician Justinus Kerner gives the first detailed description of botulism.

Physics

• Navier–Stokes equations in fluid dynamics first formulated.

Technology

• May 23 – HMS Comet launched at Deptford Dockyard in the United Kingdom, the first steamboat commissioned by the Royal Navy.
• June 10 – The Aaron Manby crosses the English Channel, making her the first seagoing iron steamboat.
• French civil engineer Louis Vicat completes construction of a concrete viaduct across the Dordogne at Souillac, Lot.

Events

• September 11 – Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is permitted by the Roman Catholic Church to be published.

Awards

• June 12 – Edward Banks knighted, the first such honour for work in civil engineering.
• Copley Medal: William Buckland

Births

• January 2 – Rudolf Clausius, German physicist
• January 6 – Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist
• January 12 – Étienne Lenoir, Belgian mechanical engineer
• February 16 – Sir Francis Galton, English explorer, biologist
• April 18 – August Heinrich Petermann, German cartographer
• June 10 – Lydia White Shattuck, American botanist
• July 22 – Gregor Mendel, Silesian geneticist
• October 13 – Lev Tsenkovsky, Polish-Ukrainian biologist
• December 27 – Louis Pasteur, French biologist

Deaths

• January 21 – Marie-Aimée Lullin, Swiss entomologist
• February 23 – Johann Matthäus Bechstein, German naturalist
• June 23 – René Just Haüy, French mineralogist
• August 13 – Jean-Robert Argand, Swiss-born mathematician
• August 25 – William Herschel, German-born British astronomer
• November 6 – Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist