1883 in science
From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
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The year 1883 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Contents
Chemistry
- Svante Arrhenius develops ion theory to explain conductivity in electrolytes.[1]
Earth sciences
- August 26 – Krakatoa begins its final phase of eruptions at 1:06pm local time. These produce a number of tsunami, mainly in the early hours of the next day, which result in about 36,000 deaths on the islands of Sumatra and Java. The final explosion at 10:02am on August 27 destroys the island of Krakatoa itself and is heard up to 3000 miles away.
- Vasily Dokuchaev publishes Russian Chernozem.
Genetics
- The concept and term Eugenics are formulated by Francis Galton.[2]
Medicine
- Thomas Clouston publishes Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases.
- Emil Kraepelin publishes Compendium der Psychiatrie.
- Journal of the American Medical Association first published under this title.
Microbiology
- Robert Koch isolates Vibrio cholerae, the cholera bacillus.
Physics
- Osborne Reynolds popularizes use of the Reynolds number in fluid mechanics.[3][4]
Technology
- May 24 – Brooklyn Bridge opens to traffic in New York. Designed by John A. Roebling with project management assisted by his wife Emily, its main suspension span of 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.31 m) exceeds the previous record by 330 feet (100 m), and will not be surpassed for twenty years.
- Charles Fritts constructs the first solar cell using the semiconductor selenium on a thin layer of gold to form a device giving less than 1% efficiency.
Zoology
- August 12 – The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
Awards
- Copley Medal: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
- Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Thomas Blanford
Births
- January 4 – Johanna Westerdijk (died 1961), Dutch plant pathologist.
- May 13 – Georgios Papanikolaou (died 1962), Greek-born cytopathologist, inventor of the Pap smear.
- June 24 – Victor Francis Hess (died 1964), American physicist.
- October 2 – Karl von Terzaghi (died 1963), Austrian "father of soil mechanics".
- October 8 – Otto Heinrich Warburg (died 1970), German physiologist and winner of the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Deaths
- April 28 – Rev. John Russell (born 1795), English dog breeder.
- May 13 – James Young (born 1811), Scottish chemist.
- June 18 – John Waterston (born 1811), Scottish physicist and civil engineer (drowned).
- June 26 – General Sir Edward Sabine (born 1788), Anglo-Irish physicist, astronomer and explorer.
- December 8 – François Lenormant (born 1837), French assyriologist and numismatist.
