1874 in science
The year 1874 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- December 9 – a transit of Venus across the Sun is observed in Muddapur, India, by an astronomical expedition led by Pietro Tacchini
Chemistry
- Per Teodor Cleve discovers that didymium is in fact two elements, now known as neodymium and praseodymium
- C. R. Alder Wright synthesizes heroin
- Othmar Zeidler synthesises DDT
- Carl Schorlemmer publishes
- Jacobus van 't Hoff and Achille Le Bel independently propose that organic molecular models can be three-dimensional
Exploration
- February – the Challenger expedition provides geological evidence for the existence of the continent of Antarctica
History of science
- John William Draper publishes ''History of the Conflict between Religion and Science''
Mathematics
- Georg Cantor's paper, "Ueber eine Eigenschaft des Inbegriffes aller reellen algebraischen Zahlen", published in Crelle's Journal, considered as the origin of set theory
- William Stanley Jevons publishes his comprehensive treatise on logic, The Principles of Science
- Sofia Kovalevskaya is awarded a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Göttingen, the first woman in Europe to hold that degree. Her submission includes a paper on partial differential equations containing a presentation of the Cauchy-Kovalevski theorem
Medicine
- April 1 – Dr Frances Morgan marries Dr George Hoggan and they set up the first husband-and-wife general medical practice in the United Kingdom
- Autumn – London School of Medicine for Women founded
- A. T. Still introduces osteopathic medicine in the United States
Neuroscience
- Vladimir Alekseyevich Betz describes giant pyramidal cells in the motor cortex, later called ''Betz cells''
Physics
- James Clerk Maxwell produces a model of Maxwell's thermodynamic surface
Psychology
- Franz Brentano publishes ''Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte''
Technology
- May 20 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a United States patent for blue denim jeans with copper rivets
- July 1 – Sholes and Glidden typewriter, with cylindrical platen and QWERTY keyboard, first marketed, in the United States
- July 4 – official opening of Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, designed by James B. Eads. It is the longest arch bridge in the world at this time, with an overall length of 6,442 feet ; the first use of true steel as a primary structural material in a major bridge project; the first built using cantilever support methods exclusively; and the first major project to make use of pneumatic caissons
- Invention of barbed wire by Joseph Glidden
Awards
Births
- January 22 – Leonard Eugene Dickson, American mathematician
- February 2 – Ernest Shackleton, Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer
- April 25 – Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor
- September 12 – Redcliffe N. Salaman, English botanist
- September 26 – Oakes Ames, American botanist
- October 13 – Kiyotsugu Hirayama, Japanese astronomer
- November 27 – Chaim Weizmann, Russian-born chemist and first President of Israel
- November 29 – António Egas Moniz, Portuguese neurologist, winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- December 6 – Elizabeth Laird, Canadian physicist
- December 28 – Arthur Schüller, Austrian-born neuroradiologist
Deaths
- January 16 – Max Schultze, German physiologist
- January 24 – Johann Philipp Reis, German physicist and inventor
- February 17 – Adolphe Quetelet, Belgian mathematician and astronomer
- February 19 – Carl Ernst Bock, German physician and anatomist
- March 3 – Forbes Winslow, English psychiatrist
- March 10 – Moritz von Jacobi, German-born electrical engineer
- March 14 – Johann Heinrich von Mädler, German astronomer
- March 28 – Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish-born German astronomer
- April 13 – James Bogardus, American inventor
- November 21 – Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet, Scottish-born naturalist