1853 in science

Biology

• March 17 – Claude Bernard presents his doctoral thesis describing the glycogenetic function of the liver.
• May – The world's first public aquarium is opened in London Zoo.
• Anton de Bary publishes the first study demonstrating that rust and smut fungi cause plant disease.

Exploration

• November 25 – First definite sighting of Heard Island in the Antarctic.
• Alfred Russel Wallace publishes A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an account of the native tribes, and observations on the climate, geology, and natural history of the Amazon Valley.

Mathematics

• Jakob Steiner investigates the Steiner system.

Medicine

• August 1 – Under terms of the Vaccination Act 1853 in the United Kingdom, all children born after this date are to receive compulsory vaccination against smallpox during their first 3 months of life.
• William Little publishes a paper "On the Deformities of the Human Frame" in which he gives the first description of pseudo-hypertrophic muscular dystrophy.
• Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood independently invent a practical hypodermic syringe.
• Antoine Desormeaux produces and names an endoscope illuminated by a kerosene lamp, using it to examine the urinary tract.

Meteorology

• August 23 – The first true International Meteorological Organization is established in Brussels.
• John Francis Campbell invents the original form of Campbell–Stokes recorder.

Technology

• Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci first develop the Barsanti-Matteucci engine, an internal combustion engine using the free-piston principle.
• Sir George Cayley builds and demonstrates the first heavier-than-air aircraft.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Heinrich Wilhelm Dove
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Adolphe d'Archiac; Édouard de Verneuil

Births

• January 24 – Alfred Senier, British chemist.
• February 15 – Frederick Treves, English surgeon.
• March 2 – Ambrosius Hubrecht, Dutch zoologist.
• March 10 – William Hampton Patton, American entomologist.
• April 8 - Laura Alberta Linton, American chemist.
• July 18 – Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate.
• September 2 – Wilhelm Ostwald, Baltic German chemist.
• September 9 – Pierre Marie, French neurologist.

Deaths

• March 17 – Christian Doppler, Austrian mathematician and discoverer of the Doppler effect.
• March 20 – Robert James Graves, Irish physician
• April 23 – Auguste Laurent, French chemist.
• July 8 – Ernst Friedrich Germar, German entomologist.
• September 14 – Hugh Edwin Strickland, English geologist and ornithologist.
• October 2 – François Arago, French mathematician, physicist, and astronomer.
• October 18 – Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim, German naturalist.