# 1893 in science

The year 1893 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

## Biology

* July 11 – Kōkichi Mikimoto, in Japan, develops the method to seed and grow cultured pearls.
* Henry Luke Bolley discovers a method of treating smut with formaldehyde.

## Chemistry

* Hans Goldschmidt discovers the thermite reaction.
* Nagai Nagayoshi synthesizes methamphetamine from ephedrine.
* Alfred Werner discovers the octahedral structure of cobalt complexes, thus establishing the field of coordination chemistry.

## Earth sciences

* Eduard Suess postulates the former existence of the Tethys Sea.

## Exploration

* Mary Kingsley lands in Sierra Leone on the first of her journeys through Africa in the interests of anthropology and natural history.

## Mathematics

* J. J. Sylvester poses what becomes known as the Sylvester–Gallai theorem in geometry.
* Geometric Exercises in Paper Folding by T. Sundara Row is first published in Madras.

## Medicine

* July 9 – Daniel H. Williams completes the first successful open heart surgery.
* October 5 – Johns Hopkins Medical School opens in the United States.
* Emil Kraepelin introduces the concept of dementia praecox in the classification of mental disorders, distinguishing it from mood disorder in his Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (4th edition).
* Ádám Politzer describes otosclerosis for the first time.
* Vladimir Bekhterev describes Ankylosing spondylitis.

## Physics

* Wilhelm Wien formulates Wien's displacement law.

## Technology

* January 2 – Webb C. Ball introduces railroad chronometers which become the general railroad timepiece standards in North America.
* February 1 – Thomas Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey.
* February 11 – János Csonka and Donát Bánki apply for a patent for the carburetor in Hungary.
* February 23 – Rudolf Diesel receives a patent for the diesel engine. In this year he also publishes his treatise Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors zum Ersatz der Dampfmaschine und der heute bekannten Verbrennungsmotoren.
* February 28 – Edward Goodrich Acheson patents the method for making the abrasive silicon carbide powder.
* May 9 – Edison's 1½ inch system of Kinetoscope is first demonstrated in public at the Brooklyn Institute.
* May – William Scherzer (dies July 20) files a patent for his design of rolling lift bridge.
* June 21 – The first Ferris Wheel opens to the public at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
* July 12 – Prototype of Diesel's Motor 250/400 (150/400) completed; first run August 10 (on petrol).
* July 25 – Completion of the Corinth Canal in Greece.
* August 17 – Wilhelm Maybach patents the spray nozzle carburetor in France.
* Refinery for Pacific Coast Borax Company in Alameda, California, designed by Ernest L. Ransome, is the first major reinforced concrete building in the United States.
* The first sousaphone is built by James Welsh Pepper at the request of bandmaster John Philip Sousa in the United States.

## Awards

* Copley Medal: George Gabriel Stokes
* Wollaston Medal for Geology: Nevil Story Maskelyne

## Births

* February 3 – Gaston Julia (died 1978), French mathematician.
* February 24 – Tokushichi Mishima (died 1975), Japanese inventor and metallurgist.
* April 29 – Harold Urey (died 1981), American winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
* April 30 – Roy Chadwick (died 1947), English aircraft designer.
* June 13 – Alan A. Griffith (died 1963), English stress engineer.
* August 5 – Sydney Camm (died 1966), English aircraft designer.
* August 15 – Leslie Comrie (died 1950), New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer.
* August 24 – Haim Ernst Wertheimer (died 1978), German Jewish biochemist.
* August 25 – Henry Trendley Dean (died 1962), American dental researcher.
* September 16 – Albert Szent-Györgyi (died 1986), Hungarian physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
* October 23 – Ernst Öpik (died 1985), Estonian astronomer and astrophysicist.
* November 3 – Edward Adelbert Doisy (died 1986), American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
* December 3 – Wilhelm Pelikan (died 1981), Austrian chemist.
* December 14 – Alf Lysholm (died 1973), Swedish mechanical engineer.
* December – Eugène Gabritschevsky (died 1979), Russian biologist and artist.

## Deaths

* January 2 – John Obadiah Westwood (born 1805), English entomologist.
* January 7 – Jožef Stefan (born 1835), Slovenian physicist and mathematician.
* March 3 – Orlando Whistlecraft (died 1810), English meteorologist.
* August 16 – Jean-Martin Charcot (born 1825), French neurologist.
* September 1 – Leonard Jenyns (born 1800), English natural historian.
* November 6 - Justin Benoît, (born 1813), French surgeon and anatomist
* December 4 – John Tyndall (born 1820), British physicist.
* December 6 – Rudolf Wolf (born 1816), Swiss astronomer.
* December 25 – Marie Durocher (born 1809), Brazilian obstetrician and physician.
* December 28 – Richard Spruce (born 1817), English botanist.