1873 in science
The year 1873 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Chemistry
- Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff and Joseph Achille Le Bel, working independently, develop a model of chemical bonding that explains the chirality experiments of Pasteur and provides a physical cause for optical activity in chiral compounds
Exploration
- The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition discovers Franz-Josef Land
Mathematics
- Charles Hermite proves that the mathematical constant e is a transcendental number
- Henri Brocard introduces the Brocard points, Brocard triangle and Brocard circle
Meteorology
- September 15 – agreement for establishment of the International Meteorological Organization.
Physics
- February 20 – English electrical engineer Willoughby Smith publishes his discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium
- June 14 – Johannes Diderik van der Waals defends his thesis, at Leiden University; in this, he introduces the concepts of molecular volume and molecular attraction; gives a semi-quantitative description of the phenomena of condensation and critical temperatures; and derives the van der Waals equation
- September 22 – James Clerk Maxwell delivers a discourse on molecules to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Bradford
- December – J. Willard Gibbs describes the principle of Gibbs free energy
- James Clerk Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism first presents the partial differential equations known as Maxwell's equations which form the foundation of classical electrodynamics, optics and electric circuits
- Frederick Guthrie is the first to report observing thermionic emission
Physiology and medicine
- June 18 – Alice Vickery passes the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's examination, becoming the first qualified female pharmacist in the United KingdomMycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, is discovered by Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen. It is the first bacterium to be identified as pathogenic in humans
- English allergist Charles Harrison Blackley publishes Experimental Researches on the Causes and Nature of Catarrhus aestivus
- Camillo Golgi first publishes a demonstration of Golgi's method
Technology
- May 20 – Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss receive United States patent 139121 for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim jeans
- Carl von Linde installs his first commercial refrigeration system, built by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg for the Spaten Brewery and using dimethyl ether as the refrigerant
- Christopher Miner Spencer introduces the fully automatic turret lathe
Awards
Births
- February 11 – Louis Charles Christopher Krieger, American mycologist
- February 12 – Barnum Brown, American paleontologist
- March 5 – Thomas Harrison Montgomery, Jr., American zoologist and cell biologist
- April 25 – Félix d'Herelle, French-Canadian microbiologist, a co-discoverer of bacteriophages
- June 28 – Alexis Carrel, French surgeon, biologist and winner of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- June 30 – Friedrich Karl Georg Fedde, German botanist
- July 7 – Sándor Ferenczi, Hungarian psychoanalyst
- October 4 – Dimitrie Pompeiu, Romanian mathematician
- October 9 – Karl Schwarzschild, German astronomer and physicist
Deaths
- January 27 – Adam Sedgwick, English geologist
- February 1 – Matthew Fontaine Maury, American oceanographer
- April 18 – Justus von Liebig, German chemist
- March 10 – John Torrey, American botanist
- March 30 – Bénédict Morel, French psychiatrist
- September 15 – Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko, Russian naturalist
- September 24 – John Thurnam, English psychiatrist and ethnologist
- October 17 – Robert McClure, British Arctic explorer
- December 14 – Louis Agassiz, Swiss-American zoologist and geologist