1834 in science

Events

• March – William Whewell first publishes the term scientist in the Quarterly Review, but notes it as "not generally palatable".

Astronomy

• March 14 – John Herschel discovers the open cluster of stars now known as NGC 3603.
• Hermann Helmholtz proposes gravitational contraction as the energy source for the Sun.
• Johann Heinrich von Mädler and Wilhelm Beer publish Mappa Selenographica, the most complete map of the Moon up to this time.
• Thomas Henderson is appointed first Astronomer Royal for Scotland.

Biology

• James Paget discovers in human muscle the parasitic worm that causes trichinosis.
• Félix Dujardin proposes that single-cell animals should be classified in a group by themselves.

Chemistry

• Phenol is discovered by Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, who has extracted it from coal tar.

Geology

• The Triassic is named by Friedrich August von Alberti for the three distinct layers of redbeds, capped by chalk, followed by black shales that are found throughout Germany and Northwest Europe, called the 'Trias'.
• The Great Devonian Controversy begins.

Paleontology

• The large prehistoric whale Basilosaurus is discovered in Eocene rock deposits. It is presumed to be a large reptile.

Mathematics

• Charles Babbage begins the conceptual design of an "analytical engine", a mechanical forerunner of the modern computer. It will not be built in his lifetime.

Mechanics

• Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi discovers his uniformly rotating self-gravitating ellipsoids.
• Scottish naval architect John Scott Russell first observes a nondecaying solitary wave while watching a boat hauled through the water of the Union Canal near Edinburgh, subsequently using a tank to study the dependence of solitary wave velocities on amplitude and liquid depth.

Medicine

• Joseph-François Malgaigne publishes Manuel de medecine operatoire.
• St. Vincent's Hospital is set up in Dublin by Mary Aikenhead, staffed by the Religious Sisters of Charity, the first hospital staffed by nuns in the English-speaking world.

Physics

• Émile Clapeyron presents a formulation of the second law of thermodynamics.
• Michael Faraday publishes "On Electrical Decomposition" in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in which he coins the words electrode, anode, cathode, anion, cation, electrolyte and electrolyze.
• Heinrich Lenz discovers Lenz's law.
• Jean-Charles-Athanase Peltier discovers the Peltier effect.

Technology

• June 21 – Cyrus McCormick receives his first patent for a mechanical reaper, in the United States.
• December 23 – English architect Joseph Hansom patents the Hansom cab.
• Joseph Chaley’s Grand Pont Suspendu in Fribourg is the first suspension bridge with cables assembled in mid-air.
• Jacob Perkins creates a cooling machine that uses ice, an early refrigerator.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Giovanni Plana

Births

• January 7 – Johann Philipp Reis, German physicist and inventor.
• January 15 – Frederick DuCane Godman, English lepidopterist, entomologist and ornithologist.
• January 17 – August Weismann, German biologist.
• February 7 – Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian chemist.
• February 16 – Ernst Haeckel, German zoologist.
• February 20 – Nikolai Kaufman, Russian botanist.
• March 17 – Gottlieb Daimler, German mechanical engineer and automotive pioneer.
• April 30 – John Lubbock, English naturalist and archaeologist.
• June 22 – William Chester Minor, Ceylonese-born American military surgeon, lexicographer and murderer.
• July 6 – Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen, English surveyor, geologist and naturalist.
• August 5 – Ewald Hering, German physiologist.
• August 10 – Maurice Raynaud, French physician.
• August 22 – Samuel Pierpont Langley, American astronomer.
• August 23 – Hugh Owen Thomas, Welsh-born orthopaedic surgeon.
• August 29 – Hermann Sprengel, German-born chemist.
• September 30 – Carl Schorlemmer, German organic chemist.
• December 15 – Charles Augustus Young, American astronomer.
• December 24 – Augustus [George Vernon Harcourt], English chemist.

Deaths

• January 8 – Jacques Labillardière, French naturalist.
• January 17 – Giovanni Aldini, Italian physicist.
• February 16 – Lionel Lukin, English inventor.
• February 26 – Alois Senefelder, German inventor.
• July 12 – David Douglas, Scottish-born botanist and explorer.
• August 7 – Joseph Marie Jacquard, French inventor.
• September 9 – James Weddell, Anglo-Scots seal hunter and Antarctic explorer.
• October 10 – Thomas Say, American naturalist.
• November 27 –, Swiss naturalist