1855 in science

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The year 1855 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Contents 1 Events 2 Biology 3 Cartography 4 Chemistry 5 Exploration 6 Medicine 7 Paleontology 8 Physics 9 Technology 10 Awards 11 Births 12 Deaths 13 References

Events

• Opening of Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule in Zurich, Switzerland.

Biology

• Robert Remak publishes Untersuchungen über die Entwickelung der Wirbelthiere in Berlin, providing evidence for cell division, which is supported (but not acknowledged) by Rudolf Virchow.^[1][2]

Cartography

• Rev. James Gall presents the Gall orthographic projection for celestial and terrestrial equal-area cartography.^[3]

Chemistry

• May 10 - The Bunsen burner is invented by Robert Wilhelm Bunsen.
• William Odling proposes that carbon is tetravalent.

Exploration

• November 17 - Dr David Livingstone becomes the first European to see the Victoria Falls.

Medicine

• March - Mary Seacole opens the British Hotel at Balaclava, a nursing and convalescent establishment for Crimean War officers.^[4]
• October - The Renkioi temporary hospital, prefabricated in wood to a design by I. K. Brunel, is erected in Turkey to serve Crimean War invalids.^[5]
• Thomas Addison describes Addison's disease in On the Constitutional and Local Effects of Disease of the Suprarenal Capsules.

Paleontology

• The first archaeopteryx fossil is found in Bavaria, but will not be identified until 1970.^[6]

Physics

• James Clerk Maxwell unifies electricity and magnetism into a single theory, classical electromagnetism, thereby showing that light is an electromagnetic wave.

Technology

• October 17 - Henry Bessemer files his patent for the Bessemer process of steelmaking.^[7]
• William Armstrong produces the rifled breech-loading Armstrong Gun.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Léon Foucault
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Henry De la Beche

Births

• January 5 - King Camp Gillette (d. 1932), inventor.
• January 21 - John Moses Browning (d. 1926), inventor.
• January 28 - William Seward Burroughs (d. 1898), inventor of the adding machine.
• March 13 - Percival Lowell (d. 1916), astronomer.
• May 29 - David Bruce (d. 1931), microbiologist.
• November 5 - Léon Teisserenc de Bort (d. 1913), meteorologist.

Deaths

• February 23 - Carl Friedrich Gauss (b. 1777), mathematician.
• March 20 - Joseph Aspdin (b. 1778), inventor.
• April 13 - Henry De la Beche (b. 1796), geologist.
• June 29 - John Gorrie (b. 1803), physician and inventor.
• July 6 - Andrew Crosse (b. 1784), 'gentleman scientist', pioneer experimenter in electricity.
• July 8 - William Edward Parry (b. 1790), Arctic explorer.
• October 7 - François Magendie (b. 1783), physiologist.

References