1848 in science
The year 1848 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Events
- September 20 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science is set up in Pennsylvania by re-formation of the American Geologists and Naturalists">Americans">American Geologists and Naturalists, with William Charles Redfield as its first president.
Astronomy
- September 16 – William Cranch Bond and William Lassell discover Hyperion, Saturn's moon.
- Lord Rosse studies M1 and names it the Crab Nebula.
- Édouard Roche calculates the Roche limit, the limiting radius of tidal destruction and tidal creation for a body held together only by its own gravity, which explains why the rings of Saturn do not condense into a satellite.
- Rudolf Wolf devises a way of quantifying sunspot activity, the Wolf number.
Botany
- April 16 – Joseph Dalton Hooker arrives at Darjeeling to begin the first European plant collecting expedition in the Himalayas.
Chemistry
- Edward Frankland, working in Germany, discovers the organometallic compound diethylzinc.
Exploration
- Admiral Nevelskoi demonstrates that the Strait of Tartary is a strait.
Medicine
- September 13 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head, providing a demonstration of the effects of damage to the brain's frontal lobe.
- November 1 – The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School, opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Alfred Baring Garrod recognises that excess uric acid in the blood is the cause of gout.
- Rudolf Virchow produces a advocating broad social as well as public health measures to counter such outbreaks.
Physics
- Lord Kelvin establishes concept of absolute zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases.
- Nicholas Callan of Maynooth College invents an improved form of battery.
- Hippolyte Fizeau and John Scott Russell present studies of the Doppler effect in electromagnetic and sound waves respectively.
Technology
- August 15 – James Warren submits a U.K. patent application for the Warren truss.
- James Bogardus erects the first free-standing cast-iron architectural façade, the Milhau Pharmacy Building in New York City.
- French civil engineer A. Boucher promotes the ribbed skew arch.
- Completion of palm houses at Kew Gardens, London, and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, by Richard Turner of Dublin.
- Jonathan J. Couch of Philadelphia, PA, invents a "percussion drill".
- Walter Hunt of New York patents his "Volition" repeating rifle, although it is not practicable at this time.
- Joseph-Louis Lambot constructs the first ferrocement boat, in France.
- Linus Yale Sr., invents the modern pin tumbler lock.
- John Stringfellow flies a steam-powered monoplane model for a short distance in a powered glide in England.
Awards
- Copley Medal: John Couch Adams
- Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Buckland
Births
- March 8 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson, American inventor.
- April 9 – Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, British-born electrical engineer and inventor
- May 23 – Otto Lilienthal, German aviation pioneer.
- June 12 – Albertina Carlsson Swedish zoologist.
- June 22 – William Macewen, Scottish surgeon.
- July 7 – Cuthbert Hilton Golding-Bird, English surgeon.
- July 27 – Loránd Eötvös, Hungarian physicist.
- August 14 – Margaret Lindsay, Irish astronomer.
- November 1 – Caroline Still Anderson, African American physician, educator and activist.
- November 8 – Gottlob Frege, German mathematician.
- November 27 – Henry A. Rowland, American physicist.
Deaths
- January 9 – Caroline Herschel, German astronomer.
- January 12 – Christophe-Paulin de La Poix de Fréminville, French explorer and naturalist.
- January 24 – Horace Wells, American dentist, pioneer of the use of anesthesia, suicide.
- August 7 – Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist.
- August 12 – George Stephenson, English locomotive engineer.
- December 18 – Bernard Bolzano, Bohemian mathematician.