1893 in science
The year 1893 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Biology
- July 11 – Kōkichi Mikimoto, in Japan, develops the method to seed and grow cultured pearls.
- Henry Luke Bolley discovers a method of treating smut with formaldehyde.
Chemistry
- Hans Goldschmidt discovers the thermite reaction.
- Nagai Nagayoshi synthesizes methamphetamine from ephedrine.
- Alfred Werner discovers the octahedral structure of cobalt complexes, thus establishing the field of coordination chemistry.
Earth sciences
- Eduard Suess postulates the former existence of the Tethys Sea.
Exploration
- Mary Kingsley lands in Sierra Leone on the first of her journeys through Africa in the interests of anthropology and natural history.
Mathematics
- J. J. Sylvester poses what becomes known as the Sylvester–Gallai theorem in geometry.Geometric Exercises in Paper Folding by T. Sundara Row is first published in Madras.
Medicine
- July 9 – Daniel H. Williams completes the first successful open heart surgery.
- October 5 – Johns Hopkins Medical School opens in the United States.
- Emil Kraepelin introduces the concept of dementia praecox in the classification of mental disorders, distinguishing it from mood disorder in his Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie.
- Ádám Politzer describes otosclerosis for the first time.
- Vladimir Bekhterev describes Ankylosing spondylitis.
Physics
- Wilhelm Wien formulates Wien's displacement law.
Technology
- January 2 – Webb C. Ball introduces railroad chronometers which become the general railroad timepiece standards in North America.
- February 1 – Thomas Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey.
- February 11 – János Csonka and Donát Bánki apply for a patent for the carburetor in Hungary.
- February 23 – Rudolf Diesel receives a patent for the diesel engine. In this year he also publishes his treatise Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors zum Ersatz der Dampfmaschine und der heute bekannten Verbrennungsmotoren.
- February 28 – Edward Goodrich Acheson patents the method for making the abrasive silicon carbide powder.
- May 9 – Edison's 1½ inch system of Kinetoscope is first demonstrated in public at the Brooklyn Institute.
- May – William Scherzer files a patent for his design of rolling lift bridge.
- June 21 – The first Ferris Wheel opens to the public at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
- July 12 – Prototype of Diesel's Motor 250/400 completed; first run August 10.
- July 25 – Completion of the Corinth Canal in Greece.
- August 17 – Wilhelm Maybach patents the spray nozzle carburetor in France.
- Refinery for Pacific Coast Borax Company in Alameda, California, designed by Ernest L. Ransome, is the first major reinforced concrete building in the United States.
- The first sousaphone is built by James Welsh Pepper at the request of bandmaster John Philip Sousa in the United States.
Awards
Births
- February 3 – Gaston Julia, French mathematician.
- February 24 – Tokushichi Mishima, Japanese inventor and metallurgist.
- April 29 – Harold Urey, American winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- April 30 – Roy Chadwick, English aircraft designer.
- June 13 – Alan A. Griffith, English stress engineer.
- August 5 – Sydney Camm, English aircraft designer.
- August 15 – Leslie Comrie, New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer.
- August 24 – Haim Ernst Wertheimer, German Jewish biochemist.
- August 25 – Henry Trendley Dean, American dental researcher.
- September 16 – Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- October 23 – Ernst Öpik, Estonian astronomer and astrophysicist.
- November 3 – Edward Adelbert Doisy, American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- December 3 – Wilhelm Pelikan, Austrian chemist.
- December 14 – Alf Lysholm, Swedish mechanical engineer.
- December – Eugène Gabritschevsky, Russian biologist and artist.
Deaths
- January 2 – John Obadiah Westwood, English entomologist.
- January 7 – Jožef Stefan, Slovenian physicist and mathematician.
- March 3 – Orlando Whistlecraft, English meteorologist.
- August 16 – Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist.
- September 1 – Leonard Jenyns, English natural historian.
- November 6 - Justin Benoît,, French surgeon and anatomist
- December 4 – John Tyndall, British physicist.
- December 6 – Rudolf Wolf, Swiss astronomer.
- December 25 – Marie Durocher, Brazilian obstetrician and physician.
- December 28 – Richard Spruce, English botanist.