1879 in science

The year 1879 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

British children's writer and amateur astronomer Agnes Giberne publishes the popular illustrated book Sun, Moon and Stars: Astronomy for Beginners which sells 24,000 copies on both sides of the Atlantic in twenty years.

April 26 – The National Park, later renamed the Royal National Park, is declared in New South Wales, Australia, the world's second oldest purposed national park, and the first to use the term "national park".
Jean Henri Fabre publishes the first of his Souvenirs entomologiques.
Heinrich Anton de Bary coins the term symbiosis in his monograph Die Erscheinung der Symbiose.

January 2 – Publication of first issue of American Chemical Society">Americans">American Chemical Society.
Per Teodor Cleve discovers the elements holmium and thulium.
Lars Fredrik Nilson discovers the element scandium.
Constantin Fahlberg working with Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University discovers saccharin.
Rodolphe Lindt invents the conching machine for use in chocolate manufacture.
Otto Schott develops a glass containing lithium. It is the first glass type that has a homogeneity allowing spectrometric measurements.

Vasily Dokuchaev introduces the concept of pedology, laying the foundations for the modern study of soil science.
Ferdinand André Fouqué publishes Santorin et ses éruptions, a significant text in volcanology.

Charles L. Dodgson publishes Euclid and his Modern Rivals in London.
Gottlob Frege publishes Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens in Halle, a significant text in the development of mathematical logic.
Felix Klein first describes the Grünbaum–Rigby configuration.

British psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne publishes "On the weight of the brain and its component parts in the insane", a key paper in the neuropathology of insanity.
London physician William Murrell reports the successful use of nitroglycerin as medication for angina.
Viennese physician Felix von Winiwarter provides an early description of Thromboangiitis obliterans.

Camptosaurus prestwichii found at Cumnor, near Oxford.

Vassili von Anrep of the University of Würzburg demonstrate the analgesic properties of cocaine.

Edwin Hall discovers the Hall Effect.
Joseph Stefan originates the Stefan–Boltzmann law, stating that the total radiation from a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its thermodynamic temperature.

February 3 – Mosley Street in Newcastle upon Tyne becomes the world's first public highway to be lit by the electric incandescent light bulb invented by Joseph Swan.
May 31 – Werner von Siemens demonstrates the first electric locomotive using an external power source at Berlin.
June 6 – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first ocean-going ship to be built of mild steel, the SS Rotomahana, on the River Clyde in Scotland.
October 22 – Thomas Edison successfully tests a carbon filament thread in an incandescent light bulb.
December 31 – Carl Benz completes his first petrol two-stroke engine.
A heavy oil engine is built by Jacob Morrison of Norton, County Durham, England.