1833 in science
The year 1833 in science and technology involved several significant events, discoveries, and situations, listed below.
Astronomy
- November 12–13 – A spectacular occurrence of the Leonid meteor shower is observed over Alabama.
Biology
- May 3 – The Entomological Society of London is inaugurated.
- Katherine Sophia Kane's The Irish Flora is published anonymously.
Chemistry
- Thomas Graham proposes Graham's law.
Computer science
- June 5 – Ada Lovelace is introduced to Charles Babbage by Mary Somerville.
Geophysics
- November 25 – A major 8.7 1833 [Sumatra earthquake|earthquake] strikes Sumatra.
Mathematics
probable date – Paul Gerwien proves the Bolyai–Gerwien theorem formulated by Farkas Bolyai: that any two simple polygons of equal area are equidecomposable.Paleontology
- Henry Witham publishes The Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables found in the Carboniferous and Oolitic deposits of Great Britain in Edinburgh.
Physics
- Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Eduard Weber develop an electromagnetic telegraph at Göttingen.
Physiology and medicine
- William Beaumont publishes Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion.
- Charles Bell publishes The Hand: its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design, the fourth Bridgewater Treatise.
- Marshall Hall coins the term "reflex" for a muscular reaction.
- Jean Lobstein proposes use of the term arteriosclerosis.
- Johannes Peter Müller begins publication of his major physiology textbook Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen.
- Anselme Payen discovers diastase.
Technology
- August 18 – The Canadian ship SS Royal William sets out from Pictou, Nova Scotia on a 25-day passage of the Atlantic Ocean largely under steam to Gravesend, Kent, England.
- Obed Hussey patents a reaper in the United States.
- Cornish engineer Adrian Stephens invents the steam whistle as a warning device at Dowlais Ironworks in Wales.
- Publication by Charles Knight of The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge begins in London.
Awards
- Copley Medal: Not awarded
Births
- January 19 – Alfred Clebsch, German mathematician.
- February 26 – Georges Pouchet, French comparative anatomist.
- March 14 – Lucy Hobbs Taylor, American dentist.
- March 23 – Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal, German psychiatrist.
- March 25 – Fleeming Jenkin, English electrical engineer.
- May 5 – Ferdinand von Richthofen, German geographer.
- June 29 – Peter Waage, Norwegian chemist.
- October 9 – Eugen Langen, German mechanical engineer.
- October 17 – Paul Bert, French physiologist.
- October 21 – Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor.
- November 27 - Émile Vallin, French military physician.
- December 2 – Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen, German pathologist.
Deaths
- January 10 – Adrien-Marie Legendre, mathematician.
- February 6
- * Fausto Elhuyar, chemist
- * Pierre André Latreille, zoologist.
- February 14 – Gottlieb Kirchhoff, chemist.
- April 22 – Richard Trevithick, engineer and inventor.
- May 15 – Bewick Bridge, mathematician.
- July 5 – Nicéphore Niépce, inventor.
- October 31 – Johann Friedrich Meckel, anatomist.