1891 in science

The year 1891 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• The New Zealand government sets aside Resolution Island in Fiordland as a nature reserve.^[1]
• The New York Botanical Garden is founded in The Bronx largely due to the efforts of Nathaniel Lord Britton.
• Jane Willis Kirkaldy and Catherine Pollard become the first women to sit final examinations in biology at the University of Oxford (and achieve first class honours).^[2]

Chemistry

• Agnes Pockels first publishes the results of her researches into surface tension.^[3][4]

Mathematics

• Fyodorov–Schoenflies theorem concluded by Yevgraf Fyodorov and Arthur Schoenflies from their work on crystallographic groups.^[5][6]

Medicine

• Julius Ludwig August Koch begins publication of Die psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten in Ravensburg, introducing the concept of psychopathology.^[7]
• Arnold Pick first uses the term dementia praecox in this form.^[8]
• The earliest recorded attempt at hip replacement is carried out by Themistocles Gluck in Berlin, using ivory to replace the femoral head.^[9]

Paleontology

• October - Eugène Dubois finds the first fragmentary bones of Pithecanthropus erectus (later redesignated Homo erectus), or 'Java Man', at Trinil on the Solo River.^[10]

Technology

• March 10 - Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, is granted a patent in the United States^[11] for an automatic telephone exchange using the Strowger switch.^[12]
• May 20 - First public demonstration of the Kinetograph moving picture system developed by W. K. L. Dickson under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison, a showing of the film known as Dickson Greeting. Edison files patents on the camera and peephole viewer on August 24.^[13]
• Michelin patent the removable pneumatic bicycle tire.^[14]
• Panhard et Levassor produce the first Système Panhard automobile layout, consisting of four wheels with front-engine, rear-wheel drive and a sliding-gear transmission, designed by Émile Levassor.^[15]
• William Le Baron Jenney develops the construction of steel frame skyscrapers in Chicago with the Ludington, Manhattan and Second Leiter Buildings.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Stanislao Cannizzaro
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: John Wesley Judd

Births

• September 14 - Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov (died 1983), Russian mathematician.
• September 24 - W. F. Friedman (died 1969), Bessarabian-born cryptanalyst.
• November 14 - Frederick Banting (died 1941), Canadian discoverer of insulin, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1923)

Deaths

• February 10 - Sofia Kovalevskaya (born 1850), mathematician.
• May 11 - Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (born 1820), physicist.
• June 9 - Henry Edwards (born 1827), entomologist and actor.
• June 23 - Wilhelm Eduard Weber (born 1804), physicist.
• November 18 - Joseph Wolstenholme (born 1829), mathematician.

References