1872 in science

Chemistry

• Robert Chesebrough patents Vaseline in the United States
• 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

Exploration

• May 13–September 26 – Benjamin Leigh Smith's 1872 expedition to Jan Mayen and Svalbard
• December 21 – Challenger expedition: sails from Portsmouth in England on the 4-year scientific expedition that lays the foundation for the science of oceanography

Mathematics

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

Medicine

• February 15 – George Huntington makes the first detailed description of Huntington's disease, in Middleport, Ohio
• Moritz Kaposi describes Kaposi's sarcoma and the manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus
• Ferdinand Monoyer proposes the dioptre as a unit for measuring the optical power of a lens

Physics

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

Technology

• April 1 – English hangman William Marwood first uses his technique of the long drop (on uxoricide William Frederick Horry at Lincoln Castle)
• 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'
• John Hopkinson proposes the group flash system for distinguishing lighthouses
• Reverend C. M. Ramus of Sussex, England, devises the single-step hydroplane hull

Institutions

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

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
• 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
• 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

References

References

1. U.S. Patent 127,568.
2. "Yellowstone, the First National Park".
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."] From The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 collection, [[Library of Congress]].
4. Capelotti, P. J.. (2008). "Benjamin Leigh Smith's second Arctic expedition: Svalbard and Jan Mayen, 1872". [[Polar Record]].
5. Rice, A. L.. (1999). "Understanding the Oceans: Marine Science in the Wake of HMS Challenger". Routledge.
6. Crilly, Tony. (2007). "50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know". Quercus.
7. Huntington, G.. (1872-04-13). "On Chorea". Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia.
8. Lanska, D. J.. (2000). "George Huntington (1850–1916) and hereditary chorea". [[Journal of the History of the Neurosciences]].
9. (2015). "Chorea: A journey through history". Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements.
10. Kaposi, Moriz. (1872). ["Idiopathisches multiples Pigmentsarkom der Haut"](https://zenodo.org/record/1428352}} Translated as: {{cite journal). Archiv für Dermatologie und Syphilis.
11. "Moriz Kohn Kaposi". [[Who Named It?.
12. Monoyer, F.. (1872). "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.
13. (1991). "Encyclopaedia of Physics".
14. {{cite DNB. George Clement. Boase
15. Improvement in Gas-Engines (Patent no. 125166).
16. Borth, Christy. (1945). "Masters of Mass Production". Bobbs-Merrill.
17. Beare, T. H.. (2004). "Hopkinson, John (1849–1898)".
18. (1914-07-24). "The Evolution of the Hydroplane". [[Flight (magazine).
19. "History". Polytechnic Museum.
20. "Copley Medal {{!}} British scientific award".
21. Lightman, Bernard. (2004). "Dictionary Of Nineteenth-Century of British Scientists Vol.1". Thoemmes.