1831 in science

List of years in science (table)
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The year 1831 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

January 7 – Great Comet of 1831 (C/1831 A1, 1830 II) first observed by John Herapath.^[1]
March 7 – Royal Astronomical Society receives its Royal Charter.^[2]
Heinrich Schwabe makes the first detailed drawing of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.
Mary Somerville translates Laplace's Mécanique céleste as The Mechanism of the Heavens.

A. A. Bussy publishes his Mémoire sur le Radical métallique de la Magnésie describing his method of isolating magnesium.

June 1 – British Royal Navy officer James Clark Ross locates the position of the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula.
December 27 – Charles Darwin starts his voyage on HMS Beagle.

Dr C. Turner Thackrah publishes The Effects of the Principal Arts, Trades, and Professions, and of Civic States and Habits of Living, on Health and Longevity, with a particular reference to the trades and manufactures of Leeds, and suggestions for the removal of many of the agents which produce disease and shorten the duration of life, a pioneering study of occupational and public health in a newly industrialised city.^[4]

Henry Witham publishes Observations on fossil vegetables, accompanied by representations of their internal structure, as seen through the microscope in Edinburgh.

April 12 – Broughton Suspension Bridge over the River Irwell in England collapses under marching troops.^[5]
August 29 – Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic induction at the Royal Society.^[6] Joseph Henry recognises it at about the same time. Faraday also develops the Faraday Wheel, a homopolar generator.
Joseph Henry invents the electric bell.^[7]
James Meadows Rendel erects the first bascule bridge with a hydraulic mechanism, on the Kingsbridge Estuary in England.^[8]
William Wallace invents the eidograph.^[9]

September 27 – British Association for the Advancement of Science first meets, in York.^[10]

January 26 – Anton de Bary (died 1888), surgeon, botanist, microbiologist, and mycologist.
February 28 – Edward James Stone (died 1897), astronomer.
March 3 – George Pullman (died 1897), inventor.
May 16 – David E. Hughes (died 1900), inventor.
June 13 – James Clerk Maxwell (died 1879), mathematician.
August 20 – Eduard Suess (died 1914), geologist.
October 6 – Richard Dedekind (died 1916), mathematician.
October 21 – Hermann Hellriegel (died 1895), German agricultural chemist who discovered the mechanism by which leguminous plants assimilate the free nitrogen of the atmosphere.
October 29 – Othniel Charles Marsh (died 1899), paleontologist.

↑ "SAO/NASA ADS Astronomy Abstract Service". Retrieved 2011-02-06.
↑ "A brief history of the RAS". Royal Astronomical Society. Archived from the original on 30 January 2011. Retrieved 2011-02-06.
↑ "History Of Dublin Zoo". Family Fun. Retrieved 2011-12-20.
↑ Hunt, Tristram (2004). Building Jerusalem: the rise and fall of the Victorian city. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-60767-7.
↑ Bishop, R.E.D. (1979). Vibration (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22779-8.
↑ "Icons, a portrait of England 1820-1840". Archived from the original on 22 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
↑ Scientific writings of Joseph Henry. 30(2). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 1886. p. 434.
↑ Clarke, Mike (2009-01-05). "A Brief History of Movable Bridges". Retrieved 2012-02-09.
↑ Waterston, Charles D.; Shearer, A. Macmillan (July 2006). Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783-2002: Biographical Index (PDF) 2. Royal Society of Edinburgh. p. 964. ISBN 978-0-902198-84-5. Retrieved 2012-01-23.
↑ Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 257–258. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.