1869 in science

The year 1869 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

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Events

• November 4 – The first issue of scientific journal Nature is published in London, edited by Norman Lockyer.

Chemistry

Mendeleev's 1869 periodic table

• March 6 – Dmitri Mendeleev makes a formal presentation of his periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
• June 15 – John Wesley Hyatt patents celluloid, in Albany, New York.
• July 15 – Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès files a patent for margarine (as oleomargarine) in France as a beef tallow and skimmed milk substitute for butter.
• German chemist Lothar Meyer makes a formal presentation of the revised and expanded version of his independently-created 1864 periodic table, „Die Natur der chemischen Elemente als Funktion ihrer Atomgewichte".
• Publication of Adolphe Wurtz's Dictionnaire de chimie pure et appliquée begins in Paris.

Life sciences

• April 6 – The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York.
• Paul Langerhans discovers the pancreatic islets.
• Friedrich Miescher discovers deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in the pus of discarded surgical bandages. Found in the nuclei of cells, Miescher names it "nuclein".
• Neurasthenia is first published as a diagnosis in psychopathology by Michigan alienist E. H. Van Deusen of the Kalamazoo asylum[1] followed a few months later by New York neurologist George Miller Beard.[2]
• French missionary and naturalist Père Armand David receives the skin of a giant panda from a hunter, the first time this species has become known to a Westerner;[3] he also first describes a specimen of the "pocket handkerchief tree", which will be named in his honor as Davidia involucrata.
• Alfred Russel Wallace publishes The Malay Archipelago.

Mathematics

• W. Stanley Jevons publishes The Substitution of Similars and has a "Logic Piano" constructed to work out problems in symbolic logic.[4]
• Hermann Schwarz devises Schwarz–Christoffel mapping.

Technology

• Approximate date – Henry Christopher Mance develops a practical military heliograph in the British Raj.[5][6][7]

Awards

• Copley Medal: Henri Victor Regnault[8]
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Henry Clifton Sorby

Births

• February 14 – C. T. R. Wilson (died 1959), Scottish winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• April 8 – Harvey Cushing (died 1939), American neurosurgeon.
• April 17 – Robert Robertson (died 1949), Scottish-born chemist.
• July 18 – Maria von Linden (died 1936), German bacteriologist and zoologist.
• August 23 – Robert Gunther (died 1940), English historian of science.
• October 3 – Robert W. Paul (died 1943), English pioneer of cinematography.
• December 16 – Bertha Lamme (died 1943), American electrical engineer.
• Helen Boyle (died 1957), British physician and psychologist.

Deaths

• July 22 – John A. Roebling (born 1806), German American bridge engineer.
• September 11 – Thomas Graham (born 1805), Scottish chemist.

References

1. Van Deusen, E. H. (April 1869). "Observations on a form of nervous prostration (neurasthenia) culminating in insanity". American Journal of Insanity. 25 (4): 445–461. doi:10.1176/ajp.25.4.445.
2. Beard, George (1869). "Neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion". The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. 80 (13): 217–221. doi:10.1056/NEJM186904290801301.
3. "Giant Panda". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2010. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
4. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (2000). The Search for Mathematical Roots, 1870–1940. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05857-3.
5. Woods, Daniel (2008). "Heliograph and Mirrors". In Sterling, Christopher (ed.). Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century. ABC-CLIO. p. 208. ISBN 978-1851097326.
6. Mance, Henry (1872-02-10). "The Heliograph or Sun Telegraph". United Service Institution of India. 1 (5): 123–130. Retrieved 2013-06-16.
7. Goode, Samuel (1875-06-14). "Mance's Heliograph, or Sun-Telegraph". Journal of the Royal United Service Institution. XIX (LXXXIII): 534–548. doi:10.1080/03071847509415772. Retrieved 2011-06-21.
8. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 23 July 2020.