1886 in science

The year 1886 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

Dorothea Klumpke takes up a post at the Paris Observatory, becoming Director of the Bureau of Measurements.

February 6 – German chemist Clemens Winkler discovers the chemical element Germanium.
June 26 – Henri Moissan reports the successful isolation of elemental fluorine by electrolysis of a solution of potassium hydrogen difluoride in liquid hydrogen fluoride.
The iodine clock reaction is discovered by Hans Heinrich Landolt.

December 17 – English adventurer Thomas Stevens concludes the first circumnavigation by bicycle in Yokohama, having set out on his penny-farthing from San Francisco in 1884.

English mathematician Rev. William Allen Whitworth is the first to use ordered Bell numbers to count the number of weak orderings of a set.

March 11 – The first Indian woman doctor qualifies in Western medicine, Anandi Gopal Joshi at the Woman's [Medical College of Pennsylvania] She is followed by Kadambini Ganguly at the Calcutta Medical College.
George Assaky describes a method for operating on separated nerve sutures.
The classic descriptions of Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease are published by Jean-Martin Charcot and his pupil Pierre Marie in Paris and by Howard H. Tooth in London.
Dr Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie is published in Stuttgart.
Enrico Morselli reports dysmorphophobia, later described as body dysmorphic disorder.
Heinrich Schule describes dementia praecox.
Dr Thomas Allinson's popular book A System of Hygienic Medicine is published in England, promoting health through natural diet and exercise rather than orthodox medicine.
Edinburgh [School of Medicine for Women] is founded by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake.

July 3 – Ottmar Mergenthaler's Linotype machine is introduced at the New-York Tribune.
August 13 – Romanian inventor Alexandru Ciurcu and French journalist demonstrate a reaction engine, used to power a boat. On December 16 a second engine explodes, killing Buisson.
September 21 – William Stanley, Jr. patents the induction coil in the United States, the first practical alternating current transformer device.
October 31 – Opening of Dom Luís Bridge, Porto, a two-hinged double-deck arch bridge across the Douro River in Portugal designed by Téophile Seyrig. Its main span of will remain the world's longest in iron.
December 28 – Josephine Cochrane patents the first commercially successful automatic dishwasher in the United States.
Gottlieb Daimler produces the first motorboat, Neckar, in Germany.
The Lebel Model 1886 rifle is developed in France, the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition.
Auguste Mustel invents the celesta.
Herbert Akroyd Stuart produces his first prototype heavy oil engines, in England.
Schuyler Wheeler produces the first electric fan, in the United States.

January 28 – Hidetsugu Yagi, Japanese electrical engineer
March 7 – G. I. Taylor, English physicist
March 8 – Edward Calvin Kendall, American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
April 5 – Frederick Lindemann, German-born British physicist
May 22 – Hermann Stieve, German anatomist and histologist
June 7 – Henri Coandă, Romanian aeronautical engineer
June 18 – Tsuruko Haraguchi, born Tsuru Arai, Japanese psychologist
July 6 – Ronald Hatton, English pomologist
July 19 – Michael Fekete, Hungarian-born Israeli mathematician
July 30 – Muthulakshmi Reddi, Indian physician and social reformer
September 26 – Archibald Hill, English physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
November 20 – Karl von Frisch, Austrian ethologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
December 9 – Clarence Birdseye, American founder of the modern frozen food industry

February 25 – Lady Katherine Sophia Kane, Irish botanist
March 15 – Anastasie Fătu, Moldavian and Romanian physician and naturalist
June 7 – Richard March Hoe, American inventor
July 1 – Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich, German mineralogist and geologist
August 17 – Aleksandr Butlerov, Russian chemist
November 14 – Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois, French mineralogist and geologist.
November 25 – Richard Maack, Russian naturalist, geographer and anthropologist
September 18 – Sampson Gamgee, English surgeon.
December 26 – Theodor von Oppolzer, Austrian astronomer