# 1826 in science

The year 1826 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

## Astronomy

* Mary Somerville presents a paper on "The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum" to the Royal Society in London.

## Chemistry

* Otto Unverdorben first isolates aniline, by destructive distillation of indigo; he calls it Crystallin.
* Antoine Jerome Balard isolates bromine.
* Pierre Jean Robiquet isolates the dye alizarin.
* Michael Faraday determines the chemical formula of naphthalene.

## Exploration

* May 22 – HMS Beagle departs on her first voyage from Plymouth for a hydrographic survey of the Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego regions of South America.
* Hyacinthe de Bougainville completes a three-year global circumnavigation.

## Mathematics

* Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik is founded by August Leopold Crelle in Berlin.
* February 23 – Nikolai Lobachevsky first presents his system of non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry.

## Physiology and medicine

* Johannes Peter Müller publishes his first important works, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtsinns ("On the comparative physiology of sight", Leipzig) and Über die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen ("On visual hallucination", Coblenz), making a first statement of the law of specific nerve energies.

## Technology

* January 30 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, built by engineer Thomas Telford, is opened between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales.
* April 1 – American inventor Samuel Morey patents a compressionless internal combustion engine in the United States.
* June – Nicéphore Niépce produces the first photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras.
* Benoit Fourneyron develops an efficient outward-flow water turbine.
* James Sharp of Northampton in England patents a practical form of gas stove.

## Zoology

* Karl Ernst von Baer discovers the mammalian ovum.
* The Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer first describes the Asiatic lion under the name Felis leo persicus.
* The Zoological Society of London is founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.

## Awards

* Copley Medal: James South

## Births

* January 15 – Marie Pasteur (died 1910), French chemist.
* May 26 – Richard Carrington (died 1875), English astronomer.
* June 26 – Morgan Crofton (died 1915), Irish mathematician.
* July 7 – John Fowler (died 1864), English agricultural engineer.
* July 13 – Stanislao Cannizzaro (died 1910), Italian chemist.
* August 21 – Carl Gegenbaur (died 1903), German anatomist.
* September 17 – Bernhard Riemann (died 1866), German mathematician.
* October 8 – Emily Blackwell (died 1910), American physician.
* Alphonse de Polignac (died 1863), French mathematician.

## Deaths

* January 3 – Marie Le Masson Le Golft (born 1750), French naturalist.
* January 6 – John Farey (born 1766), English geologist.
* March 28 - Jean-Baptiste Dumangin (born 1744), French physician.
* June 7 – Joseph von Fraunhofer (born 1787), German physicist.
* June 30 - Clément Joseph Tissot (born 1747), French physician and physiotherapist.
* July 4 – Thomas Jefferson (born 1743), Founding Father and 3rd President of the United States and inventor.
* July 22 – Giuseppe Piazzi (born 1746), Italian astronomer.
* August 13 - René Laennec (born 1781), French physician and musician.
* September 6 - Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri (born 1772), Italian surgeon.
* October 25 – Philippe Pinel (born 1745), French psychiatrist.
* November 23 – Johann Elert Bode (born 1747), German astronomer.
* November 24 - Clarke Abel (born 1780), British surgeon and naturalist.