1872 in science explained

The year 1872 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Chemistry

• Robert Chesebrough patents Vaseline in the United States^[1]
• Eugen Baumann rediscovers polyvinyl chloride
• Charles-Adolphe Wurtz discovers the aldol reaction

Conservation

• March 1 – Yellowstone National Park is established in the United States, the world's first national park^{[2] [3]}

Exploration

• December 21 – Challenger expedition: sails from Portsmouth in England on the 4-year scientific expedition that lays the foundation for the science of oceanography^[4]

Mathematics

• Richard Dedekind publishes Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen, a theory of irrational numbers^[5]
• Felix Klein produces the Erlangen program on geometries^[5]

Medicine

• February 15 – George Huntington makes the first detailed description of Huntington's disease, in Middleport, Ohio^{[6] [7] [8]}
• Moritz Kaposi describes Kaposi's sarcoma^{[9] [10]} and the manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus
• Ferdinand Monoyer proposes the dioptre as a unit for measuring the optical power of a lens^[11]

Physics

• Ludwig Boltzmann states the Boltzmann equation for the temporal development of distribution functions in phase space, and publishes his H-theorem^[12]

Technology

• April 2 – George Brayton obtains a United States patent for a constant pressure internal combustion engine, initially using vaporized gas, and marketed as 'Brayton's Ready Motor'.^{[13] [14]}
• John Hopkinson proposes the group flash system for distinguishing lighthouses^[15]
• Reverend C. M. Ramus of Sussex, England, devises the single-step hydroplane hull^[16]

Institutions

• October 1 – the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session
• The Polytechnic Museum in Moscow is founded^[17]

Publications

• May – the magazine Popular Science is first published in the United States
• Charles Darwin publishes The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

Awards

• Copley Medal: Friedrich Woehler^[18]
• Wollaston Medal for geology: James Dwight Dana

Births

• April 5 – Samuel Cate Prescott (died 1962), American food scientist and microbiologist
• April 21 - Charles Gandy (died 1943), French physician.
• May 6 – Willem de Sitter (died 1934), Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer
• May 21 – Henry E. Warren (died 1957), American inventor
• May 31 – Charles Greeley Abbot (died 1973), American astrophysicist
• August 1 – Solomon Carter Fuller (died 1953), Liberian-born psychiatrist
• September 23 – Marie Depage (died in sinking of the RMS Lusitania 1915), Belgian nurse
• October 4 – Ernest Fourneau (died 1949), French medicinal chemist

Deaths

• March 8  - Priscilla Susan Bury (born 1799), English botanist^[19]
• April 2 – Samuel Morse (born 1791), American inventor
• May 6 – George Robert Gray (born 1808), English zoologist
• August 11 – Sir Andrew Smith (born 1797), Scottish-born military surgeon, explorer, ethnologist and zoologist
• August 22 – Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (born 1787), French physician
• November 7 – Alfred Clebsch (born 1833), German mathematician
• December 6 – Félix Archimède Pouchet (born 1800), French scientist
• December 24 – William John Macquorn Rankine (born 1820), Scottish physicist
• Anne Elizabeth Ball (born 1808), Irish psychologist

Notes and References

1. U.S. Patent 127,568.
2. Web site: Yellowstone, the First National Park . 16 June 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110629122651/http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/yehtml/yeabout.html . 29 June 2011 . dead .
3. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/consrvbib:@field(NUMBER+@band(amrvl+vl002)) U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 17, Chap. 24, pp. 32-33. "An Act to set apart a certain Tract of Land lying near the Head-waters of the Yellowstone River as a public Park."
4. Book: Rice, A. L.. Understanding the Oceans: Marine Science in the Wake of HMS Challenger. London. Routledge. 1999. 27–48. The Challenger Expedition. 978-1-85728-705-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=F5agn3NSzEoC&pg=PA27. 8 May 2011 .
5. Book: Crilly, Tony. 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London. Quercus. 2007. 978-1-84724-008-8.
6. Huntington. G.. On Chorea. Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia. 26. 15. 1872-04-13. 317–321.
7. Lanska. D. J.. George Huntington (1850–1916) and hereditary chorea. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 9. 1. 76–89. 2000. 11232352. 10.1076/0964-704X(200004)9:1;1-2;FT076. 22659368.
8. Vale. Thiago Cardoso. Cardoso. Francisco. Chorea: A journey through history. Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements. 2015. 5. 1–6. 26056609. 10.7916/D8WM1C98. 4454991.
9. Moriz. Kaposi. Idiopathisches multiples Pigmentsarkom der Haut. 1872. Archiv für Dermatologie und Syphilis. 4. 2. 265–73. 10.1007/bf01830024. 31438763. Translated as: Idiopathic Multiple Pigmented Sarcoma of the Skin. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 32. 1982. 342–7. 10.3322/canjclin.32.6.342. 6. Kaposi. M.. free.
10. Web site: Moriz Kohn Kaposi. Whonamedit?. 2011-03-25.
11. Monoyer. F.. Sur l'introduction du système métrique dans le numérotage des verres de lunettes et sur le choix d'une unité de réfraction. Annales d'Oculistiques. 68. 101. 1872.
12. Book: Encyclopaedia of Physics. 2nd. 1991.
13. Improvement in Gas-Engines (Patent no. 125166).
14. Book: Borth, Christy. Masters of Mass Production. 152. Bobbs-Merrill. Indianapolis. 1945.
15. T. H.. Beare. Hopkinson, John (1849–1898). 2004. 2011-06-02. 10.1093/ref:odnb/13758.
16. The Evolution of the Hydroplane. Flight. 6. 796. 1914-07-24. 2012-01-09.
17. Web site: Polytechnic Museum. History.
18. Web site: Copley Medal British scientific award . Encyclopedia Britannica . 23 July 2020 . en.
19. Book: Lightman, Bernard. Dictionary Of Nineteenth-Century of British Scientists Vol.1. Bristol. Thoemmes. 2004. 356. 978-1-85506-999-2.