1887 in science

The year 1887 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

April – Carte du Ciel project initiated by Paris Observatory director Amédée Mouchez.
Theodor von Oppolzer's Canon der Finsternisse, a compilation of the 8,000 solar and 5,200 lunar eclipses from 1200 BC until 2161 AD, is published posthumously.

Jean Pierre Mégnin publishes Faune des Tombeaux, the founding work of modern forensic entomology.
Sergei Winogradsky discovers the first known form of lithotrophy during his research with Beggiatoa.
The Petri dish is created by German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri.

Amphetamine is first synthesized in Germany by Romanian chemist Lazăr Edeleanu, who names it phenylisopropylamine.
Otto Schott produces 'Normalthermometerglas' for the first time.

January 28 – In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, in the United States, the largest snowflakes on record are reported. They are 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick.
September 28 – Start of the Yellow River floods in China: 900,000 dead.

June 23 – The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada, creating that nation's first national park, Banff National Park.

February 23 – The French Riviera is hit by a large earthquake, killing around 2,000 along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
In Hawaii, the Mauna Loa volcano eruptions subside, having begun in 1843. During the 1887 eruption, about 2½ million tons of lava per hour pours out, covering an area of 29 km².

March 3 – Anne Sullivan begins to teach language to the deaf and blind Helen Keller.
July 26 – L. L. Zamenhof publishes Lingvo internacia under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto".

January 11 – Louis Pasteur's anti-rabies treatment is defended in the French Academy of Medicine by Dr. Joseph Grancher.
August – The U.S. National Institutes of Health is founded at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, NY, as the Laboratory of Hygiene.
October 1 – Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese founded by Patrick Manson.
Paediatrician Samuel Gee gives the first modern-day description of coeliac disease in children in a lecture at Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children in London.>
Surgeon Franz König publishes "Über freie Körper in den Gelenken" in the journal Deutsche Zeitschrift für Chirurgie, first describing the disease Osteochondritis dissecans.
The Hospitals Association establishes the first register of nurses in the United Kingdom.

November – The Michelson–Morley experiment is performed, indicating that the speed of light is independent of motion.
Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect on the production and reception of electromagnetic waves in radio, an important step towards the understanding of the quantum nature of light.

November – G. Stanley Hall founds The American Journal of Psychology.
Richard Hodgson and S. J. Davey, in the course of investigations into popular belief in parapsychology, publish one of the first descriptions of eyewitness unreliability.

March 8 – Everett Horton of Connecticut patents a fishing rod of telescoping steel tubes.
March 13 – Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs.
June 8 – Herman Hollerith receives a U.S. patent for his punched card calculator.
July – James Blyth operates the first working wind turbine at Marykirk in Scotland.
July 19 – Dorr Eugene Felt receives the first U.S. patent for his comptometer.
August – Anna Connelly patents a fire escape.
October 18 – Jacob Fitzgerald and William H. Silver are granted a U.S. patent for a "potato masher and fruit crusher", a form of potato ricer.
November 8 – Emile Berliner is granted a U.S. patent for his Gramophone.
Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick invents the contact lens, made of a type of brown glass.
English engineer James Atkinson invents his "Cycle Engine".
Mexican general Manuel Mondragón patents the Mondragón rifle, the world's first automatic rifle.
Alfred Yarrow completes the first practical high-pressure water-tube Yarrow boiler, for a torpedo boat.

Publication in Barcelona of Enrique Gaspar's El anacronópete, the first work of fiction to feature a time machine.