1826 in science

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; he calls it Crystallin.
• Antoine Jerome Balard isolates bromine.
• Pierre Jean Robiquet isolates the dye alizarin.
• Michael Faraday determines the chemical formula of naphthalene.

Exploration

• May 22 – 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

• 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 and Über die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen, 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.
• April 1 – American inventor Samuel Morey patents a compressionless internal combustion engine in the United States.
• June – Nicéphore Niépce produces the first photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras.
• 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.
• The Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer first describes the Asiatic lion under the name Felis leo persicus.
• The Zoological Society of London is founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.

Awards

• Copley Medal: James South

Births

• January 15 – Marie Pasteur, French chemist.
• May 26 – Richard Carrington, English astronomer.
• June 26 – Morgan Crofton, Irish mathematician.
• July 7 – John Fowler, English agricultural engineer.
• July 13 – Stanislao Cannizzaro, Italian chemist.
• August 21 – Carl Gegenbaur, German anatomist.
• September 17 – Bernhard Riemann, German mathematician.
• October 8 – Emily Blackwell, American physician.
• Alphonse de Polignac, French mathematician.

Deaths

• January 3 – Marie Le Masson Le Golft, French naturalist.
• January 6 – John Farey, English geologist.
• March 28 - Jean-Baptiste Dumangin, French physician.
• June 7 – Joseph von Fraunhofer, German physicist.
• June 30 - Clément Joseph Tissot, French physician and physiotherapist.
• July 4 – Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and 3rd President of the United States and inventor.
• July 22 – Giuseppe Piazzi, Italian astronomer.
• August 13 - René Laennec, French physician and musician.
• September 6 - Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri, Italian surgeon.
• October 25 – Philippe Pinel, French psychiatrist.
• November 23 – Johann Elert Bode, German astronomer.
• November 24 - Clarke Abel, British surgeon and naturalist.