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1894 in science

The year 1894 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy[edit]

• March 21 (23:00 GMT) – Syzygy: Mercury transits the Sun as seen from Venus, and Mercury and Venus both simultaneously transit the Sun as seen from Saturn.

Biology[edit]

• Patrick Manson develops the thesis that malaria is spread by mosquitoes.
• Jean Pierre Mégnin publishes La faune des cadavres application de l'entomologie à la médecine légale in Paris, an important text in forensic entomology.^[1]
• Alexandre Yersin and Kitasato Shibasaburō independently identify the bacterium later called Yersinia pestis in the 1894 Hong Kong plague.^[2][3]

Chemistry[edit]

• Argon identified by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay.^[4][5]
• Viscose, a form of artificial silkorrayon, is patentedbyCharles Frederick Cross with Edward John Bevan and Clayton Beadle.

Physiology and medicine[edit]

• Otto Binswanger describes what will become known as Binswanger's disease.

Psychology[edit]

• Psychological Review established in the United States by James Mark Baldwin and James McKeen Cattell.

Technology[edit]

• August 13 – The first Allan truss bridge, designed by Percy Allan, is completed in New South Wales.^[6]
• August 14 – Oliver Lodge demonstrates "Hertzian waves" i.e. radio transmission (ofMorse code) in the University of Oxford from the Clarendon Laboratory to the University Museum (200 ft; 61 m) for the British Association for the Advancement of Science^[7] using a modified Branly coherer.
• November 6 – William C. Hooker of Abingdon, Illinois is granted a United States patent for a spring-loaded mousetrap.^[8]
• Construction of the first oil-engined rail locomotive, an experimental unit designed by William Dent Priestman and built by his company, Priestman BrothersofHull, England.^[9]
• John JolyofDublin devises the Joly colour screen, an additive colour photographic process for producing images from a single photographic plate.^[10]
• Astronomical photographer Julius Scheiner devises a film speed measurement system.

Awards[edit]

• Copley Medal: Edward Frankland^[11]
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Karl von Zittel

Births[edit]

• January 1 – S. N. Bose (died 1974), Indian physicist.
• January 13 – Dorothée Pullinger (died 1986), French-born British production engineer.
• February 11 – Izaak Kolthoff (died 1993), Dutch 'father of analytical chemistry'.
• February 16 – Constance Tipper, née Elam (died 1995), English metallurgist.
• April 29 – Marietta Blau (died 1970), Austrian physicist.^[12]
• May 5 – August Dvorak (died 1975), American educational psychologist.
• June 13 – Leo Kanner (died 1981), Austrian-born clinical child psychiatrist.
• June 14 – W. W. E. Ross (died 1966), Canadian geophysicist and poet.
• June 23 – Alfred Kinsey (died 1956), American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist, founder of the Institute for Sex ResearchatIndiana University (Bloomington) in 1947.
• July 8 – Pyotr Kapitsa (died 1984), Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.
• July 17 – Georges Lemaître (died 1966), Belgian physicist.
• August 2 – Bertha Lutz (died 1976), Brazilian herpetologist and women's rights campaigner.
• November 19 – Heinz Hopf (died 1971), German mathematician.

Deaths[edit]

• January 1 – Heinrich Hertz (born 1857), German physicist.
• February 3 – Edmond Frémy (born 1814), French chemist.
• March 29 – Georges Pouchet (born 1833), French comparative anatomist.
• April 2 – Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (born 1817), Mauritian-born physiologist and neurologist.
• April 9 – Arthur Hill Hassall (born 1817), English physician, microbiologist and chemical analyst.
• April 27 – Birdsill Holly (born 1820), American hydraulic engineer.
• November 26 – Pafnuty Chebyshev (born 1821), Russian mathematician.
• October 7 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (born 1809), American physician and writer.
• September 8 – Hermann von Helmholtz (born 1821), German physicist.

References[edit]