1897 in science

The year 1897 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Chemistry

• April 30 – J. J. Thomson first describes his discovery of the electron.^[1][2]

History of science

• Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld publishes Periplus: An Essay on the Early History of Charts and Sailing Directions in Stockholm.

Mathematics

• David Hilbert unifies the field of algebraic number theory with his treatise Zahlbericht.
• John Edward Campbell originates the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff formula for multiplication of exponentials in Lie algebras.^[3]
• Raoul Bricard investigates and classifies flexible polyhedra, defining the Bricard octahedron.^[4]
• Henri Brocard begins publication of his source book on geometric curves, Notes de Bibliographie des Courbes Géométriques, in Bar-le-Duc.^[5][6]

Turbinia photographed by Alfred J. West

Medicine

• August 20 – Ronald Ross discovers the malaria Plasmodium in an Anopheles mosquito, demonstrating the transmission mechanism for the disease.^[7]
• October 10 – Chemists working at Bayer AG create a synthetically altered version of salicin which the company names Aspirin.
• Danish veterinarian Bernhard Bang isolates Brucella abortus as the agent of Brucellosis.
• Epinephrine discovered by John Jacob Abel.
• L. Emmett Holt publishes the standard textbook The Diseases of Infancy and Childhood in New York.

Psychology

• Émile Durkheim publishes his classic study Le Suicide.

Technology

• May 13 – Guglielmo Marconi sends the first ever wireless communication over open sea when the message "Are you ready" is transmitted across the Bristol Channel from Lavernock Point in South Wales to Flat Holm Island, a distance of 6 kilometres (3.7 mi).^[8]
• May 17 – Launch of the Holland VI (later USS Holland (SS-1)), designed by John Philip Holland, at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey; this is the first submarine having power to run submerged for any considerable distance, and the first to combine electric motors for submerged travel and gasoline (Otto) engines for use on the surface.
• June 26 – At the British Fleet Review, Charles Parsons gives a spectacular display of the unprecedented speed attainable by his steam turbine-powered Turbinia.^[9]
• August 10 – Rudolf Diesel builds his first working prototype Diesel engine in Augsburg.
• August 31 – Thomas Edison is granted a patent for the Kinetoscope, a precursor of the movie projector.
• The Dahlander pole changing motor is patented.
• Hiram P. Maxim develops the muffler in conjunction with the firearm silencer (suppressor).

Awards

• Copley Medal: Albert von Kölliker
• Wollaston Medal: Wilfred Hudleston

Births

• March 24 – Wilhelm Reich (died 1957), Austrian psychoanalyst.
• July 20 – Tadeusz Reichstein (died 1996), Polish-born Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
• August 12 – Otto Struve (died 1963), Ukrainian-born astronomer.
• September 12 – Irène Joliot-Curie (died 1956), French chemist.
• November 4 – C. B. van Niel (died 1985), Dutch-born microbiologist.
• November 13 – Tilly Edinger (died 1967), German-born paleoneurologist.
• December 22 – Vojtěch Jarník (died 1970), Czech mathematician.

Deaths

• January 25 – David Kirkaldy (born 1820), Scottish-born engineer, pioneer of materials testing.
• February 19 – Karl Weierstrass (born 1815), German mathematician.
• March 3 – John Peirce (born 1836), American inventor.
• March 15 – James Joseph Sylvester (born 1814), English mathematician.
• May 6
  • Edward James Stone (born 1831), English astronomer.
  • Alfred Des Cloizeaux (born 1817), French mineralogist.
• May 7 – Abraham Dee Bartlett (born 1812), English zoologist.
• August 27 – Eduard von Hofmann (born 1837), Austrian forensic pathologist.
• October 19 – George Pullman (born 1831), American inventor.
• October 31 – Samuel Haughton (born 1821), Irish scientific polymath.

References