1870 in science

The year 1870 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• January 18 - Gerhardt Krefft first describes the Queensland lungfish, in The Sydney Morning Herald.
• Charles Valentine Riley confirms Phylloxera as the cause of the Great French Wine Blight.^[1]

Chemistry

• Norman Lockyer and Edward Frankland propose that the gas detected in solar observations should be called 'helium'.^[2][3]

Ecology

• Introduced rabbits reach the New South Wales border in Australia.

Mathematics

• Felix Klein constructs a model for hyperbolic geometry establishing its self-consistency and the logical independence of Euclid's fifth postulate. (Note: Eugenio Beltrami had previously given such a model in 1868.)
• W. Stanley Jevons publishes the popular textbook Elementary Lessons on Logic.^[4]

Medicine

• Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish the germ theory of disease.
• Henry Maudsley publishes his lectures on Body and Mind: an Inquiry into their Connection and Mutual Influence.

Meteorology

• November 1 - In the United States, the newly created Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast: "High winds at Chicago and Milwaukee... and along the Lakes".

Physics

• Rudolph Clausius proves the scalar virial theorem.

Technology

• February 26 - In New York City, the first pneumatic-subway is opened.
• August 2 - Official opening of the Tower Subway beneath the River Thames in London, first use of the cylindrical wrought iron tunnelling shield devised by Peter W. Barlow and James Henry Greathead^[5] and of a permanent tunnel lining of cast iron segments.^[6]
• Collotype black-and-white photographic process invented.
• Henry R. Heyl receives a US patent for a magic lantern movie projector.
• The stock ticker is invented by Thomas Alva Edison.
• First known use of weapons for the anti-aircraft role at Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

Awards

• Copley Medal: James Joule
• Wollaston Medal for geology: Gerard Paul Deshayes

Births

• January 9 - Joseph Strauss (died 1938), American bridge engineer.
• January 13 - Ross Granville Harrison (died 1959), American physiologist.
• February 7 - Alfred Adler (died 1937), Austrian psychotherapist.
• March 17 - Horace Donisthorpe (died 1951), English entomologist.
• May 20 - Arthur Korn (died 1945), German inventor.
• October 23 - George Newman (died 1948), English public health physician.

Deaths

• March 9 - 'Granny' Maria Ann Smith (born 1799), English-born Australian horticulturalist.
• March 12 - Charles Xavier Thomas (born 1785), French inventor of the first mass-produced calculator.
• December 27 (O.S. December 15) - Nikolai N. Kaufman (born 1834), Russian botanist.
• November 14 - Karl Weltzien (born 1813), German inorganic chemist.
• Alexander Henry Haliday (born 1806), Anglo Irish entomologist.

References