1885 in science

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The year 1885 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Contents 1 Astronomy 2 Biology 3 Chemistry 4 Medicine 5 Physics 6 Psychology 7 Technology 8 Awards 9 Births 10 Deaths 11 References

Astronomy

• August 20 - Ernst Hartwig discovers S Andromedae, a supernova in the Andromeda galaxy, the first supernova discovered beyond the Milky Way.

Biology

• The genus Plasmodium is described by Ettore Marchiafava and Angelo Celli.
• The bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) is discovered by Theodor Escherich.^[1]

Chemistry

• Carl Auer von Welsbach patents his first incandescent gas mantle.

Medicine

• July 6 - Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies. The patient is Joseph Meister, a boy bitten by a rabid dog.
• Georges Gilles de la Tourette publishes an account of nine patients with what will become known as Tourette syndrome.^[2]

Physics

• Johann Balmer publishes an empirical mathematical formula for the visible spectral lines of the hydrogen atom.^[3][4]

Psychology

• Hermann Ebbinghaus publishes Über das Gedächtnis ("On Memory", later translated as Memory: a Contribution to Experimental Psychology).

Technology

• April 3 - Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his single-cylinder water-cooled engine design.
• Karl Benz produces the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, regarded as the first automobile (patented and publicly launched the following year).^[5]
• Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach produce the Daimler Reitwagen, regarded as the first motorcycle.^[6][7][8]
• John Kemp Starley demonstrates the Rover safety bicycle, regarded as the first practical modern bicycle.^[9]
• Completion of the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, designed by William Le Baron Jenney. With ten floors and a fireproof weight-bearing metal frame, it is regarded as the first skyscraper.^[10]
• Completion of Sway Tower in Hampshire, England, designed by Andrew Peterson using concrete made with Portland cement. It remains the world's tallest non-reinforced concrete structure.^[11][12]

Awards

• Copley Medal: Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: George Busk

Births

• January 24 - Marjory Stephenson (d. 1948), English biochemist
• June 2 - Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt (d. 1964), German neuropathologist
• August 1 - George de Hevesy (d. 1966), Hungarian Nobel laureate in chemistry
• October 7 - Niels Bohr (d. 1962), Danish physicist
• October 23 - Jan Czochralski (d. 1953), Polish discoverer of the Czochralski process for growing crystals
• November 7 - Sabina Spielrein (k. 1942), Russian psychoanalyst
• November 9 - Hermann Weyl (d. 1955), German mathematician
• December 2 - George Minot (d. 1950), American Nobel laureate in physiology

Deaths

• June 12 - Fleeming Jenkin (b. 1833), English engineer

References