1837 in science

The year 1837 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• August 9 - Edward C. Herrick, in New Haven, Connecticut, identifies the Perseids as an annual phenomenon.^[1]
• Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich von Mädler publish a definitive description of the Moon, Der Mond nach seinen kosmischen und individuellen Verhältnissen.
• Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve publishes Stellarum Duplicium Mensurae Micrometricae.

Geology

• Louis Agassiz postulates his theory of glaciation.

Mathematics

• Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet publishes Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions, using mathematical analysis concepts to tackle an algebraic problem and thus creating the branch of analytic number theory. In proving the theorem, he introduces the Dirichlet characters and L-functions.^[2][3] He also notes the difference between the absolute and conditional convergence of series and its impact in what will later be called the Riemann series theorem.
• Bernard Bolzano publishes Wissenschaftslehre.
• William Rowan Hamilton treats complex numbers as ordered pairs of real numbers.^[4]
• Simeon Poisson's lectures on probability and decision theory are published.
• Pierre Wantzel proves that several ancient geometric problems (including doubling the cube and trisecting the angle) are impossible to solve using only compass and straightedge.^[4][5]

Medicine

• William John Little produces his doctoral dissertation on tenotomy, the first description of this form of surgery.^[6]

Technology

• February 25 - Thomas Davenport obtains the first United States patent on an electric motor.^[7]
• May - Samuel Morse patents his telegraph and exhibits it to the United States Congress.
• June 12 - Cooke and Wheatstone file their patent for the electrical telegraph in the United Kingdom.^[8]
• July 19 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship SS Great Western is launched in Bristol.^[9]
• July - Godefroy Engelmann of Mulhouse patents chromolithography.^[10]
• November 18 - William Crompton patents the cotton power loom in the United States.^[11]

Publications

• Andrew Ure publishes his encyclopedia A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines in the United Kingdom.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Antoine C. Becquerel; John Frederic Daniell
• Wollaston Medal: Proby Thomas Cautley; Hugh Falconer

Births

• January 16 – Ellen Russell Emerson (died 1907), ethnologist.
• January 17 – François Lenormant (died 1883), assyriologist and numismatist.
• January 19 – William Williams Keen (died 1932), physician.
• January 27 – Eduard von Hofmann (died 1897), forensic pathologist.
• March 7 – Henry Draper (died 1882), doctor, astronomer.
• March 23 – Richard Anthony Proctor (died 1888), astronomer.
• April 3 – John Burroughs (died 1921), naturalist.
• May 26 – Washington Roebling (died 1926), civil engineer.
• June 20 – Paul Bachmann (died 1920), mathematician.
• September 8 – Raphael Pumpelly (died 1923), geologist.
• October 23 – Moritz Kaposi (died 1902), dermatologist.
• November 4 – James Douglas (died 1918), metallurgist.
• November 14 – Lucas Barrett (died 1862), naturalist.
• November 23 – Johannes Diderik van der Waals (died 1923), physicist.
• November 28 – John Wesley Hyatt (died 1920), inventor.

Deaths

• February 1 – Edward Donovan (born 1768), Anglo-Irish naturalist.
• February 4 – John Latham (born 1740), English physician, naturalist and "grandfather of Australian ornithology".
• February 16 – Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (born 1776), German naturalist and advocate of transmutation.

References