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1890 in science
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1890 science
1890
The year 1890 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Biology
September 25 – Sequoia National Park created in the United States.
October 1 – Yosemite National Park created in the United States.
Walter Heape successfully breeds rabbits from fertilised ova transferred from the biological mother to the uterus of an animal of a different breed.Heape Walter 1891 Preliminary Note on the Transplantation and Growth of Mammalian Ova within a Uterine Foster-Mother https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/18403272 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 48 457–8 115017 Biodiversity Heritage Library
Francis Galton announces a statistical demonstration of the uniqueness and classifiability of individual human fingerprints.The Patterns in Thumb and Finger Marks – On Their Arrangement into Naturally Distinct Classes, the Permanence of the Papillary Ridges that Make Them, and the Resemblance of Their Classes to Ordinary Genera 1–23 Francis Galton Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 182 1891 91733 10.1098/rstb.1891.0001 free
Jacques Loeb publishes his first major work on tropism, Der Heliotropismus der Thiere und seine Uebereinstimmung mit dem Heliotropismus der Pflanzen.Loeb Jacques https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/1663 Der Heliotropismus der Thiere und seine Uebereinstimmung mit dem Heliotropismus der Pflanzen 1890 Hertz Würzburg 10.5962/bhl.title.1663
Henry Luke Bolley at the new North Dakota Agricultural College isolates the organism responsible for potato scab and develops an effective treatment.
Chemistry
Nikolai Menshutkin discovers that a tertiary amine can be converted into a quaternary ammonium salt by reaction with an alkyl halide – the Menshutkin reaction.N. Menschutkin Beiträgen zur Kenntnis der Affinitätskoeffizienten der Alkylhaloide und der organischen Amine Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie 5 1890 589N. Menschutkin Über die Affinitätskoeffizienten der Alkylhaloide und der Amine Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie 6 1890 41 10.1515/zpch-1890-0107
Emil Fischer establishes the stereochemistry and isomeric nature of the sugars by epimerization between gluconic and mannonic acids and synthesizes glucose, fructose and mannose from glycerol.Synthese des Traubenzuckers 799–805 Emil Fischer 10.1002/cber.189002301126 Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft 1890 23 https://zenodo.org/record/1425567
Computer science
June 1 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to record census returns using punched card input, a landmark in the history of computing hardware. Hollerith's company eventually becomes IBM.
Earth sciences
The United States city of Boise, Idaho, drills the first geothermal well.
The phosphate mineral messelite (from Messel in Germany) is first described.Muthmann W. Kürzere Originalmittheilungen und Notizen: Messlit, ein neues Mineral Zeitschrift für Kristallographie, Kristallgeometrie, Kristallphysik, Kristallchemie 1890 17 93–94 https://books.google.com/books?id=rlQPAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA93 Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft. German
Mathematics
Philippa Fawcett is placed above the Senior Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge in England.
P. J. Heawood proves the five colour theorem.Tony Crilly 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know London Quercus 2007 978-1-84724-008-8
Giuseppe Peano is the first to demonstrate a space-filling curve.
Medicine
Discovery by Emil von Behring and Kitasato Shibasaburō that an anti-toxin for immunizing people against diphtheria can be prepared by injecting diphtheria toxin into animals.Waldman Thomas A. 2003 Immunotherapy: past, present and future Nature Medicine 9 269–277 10.1038/nm0303-269 12612576 3 https://zenodo.org/record/1233435/files/article.pdf
Curt Schimmelbusch invents the Schimmelbusch mask for the safe delivery of anesthetics to surgical patients.http://woodlibrarymuseum.org/museum/item/58/schimmelbusch-mask Schimmelbusch Mask Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology Park Ridge, Illinois 2011 2013-03-19
Santiago Ramón y Cajal publishes the first edition of Manual de Anatomia Pathologica General.
Robert Koch publishes his postulates on the causal relationship between microbes and diseases.
William James publishes The Principles of Psychology.
Technology
May – Herbert Akroyd Stuart, in collaboration with Charles Richard Binney and Richard Hornsby & Sons, files a British patent for Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air, the first successful design of hot bulb engine, which will be produced as the heavy-oil Hornsby-Akroyd oil engine.British Patent 7146. The Akroyd Oil Engine Ray Hooley's – Ruston-Hornsby – Engine Pages http://www.oldengine.org/members/ruston/History6.htm 2011-05-31 https://web.archive.org/web/20110524213717/http://www.oldengine.org/members/ruston/History6.htm 24 May 2011 dead
August 6 – At Auburn Prison in New York, William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed in the AC electric chair.
October 9 – The first brief flight of Clément Ader's steam-powered fixed-wing aircraft Eole takes place in Satory, France. It flies uncontrolled approximately 50 m ft on at a height of 20 cm, the first take-off of a powered airplane solely under its own power.Tom D Crouch Clément Ader Encyclopædia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/5780/Clement-Ader 2011-03-03http://www.flyingmachines.org/ader.html Carroll Gray Clement Ader 1841–1925 Flying Machines 1998–2003 2011-03-03Charles H. Gibbs-Smith Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith Hops and Flights: A Roll Call of Early Powered Take-offs Flight 75 468 1959 http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1959/1959%20-%200937.html 2011-03-03
Approximate date – British civil engineer Ernest William Moir invents the airlock while working in New York.
Scottish American chemist William Morrison produces the first successful practical electric road vehicle in the United States.
The precut paperboard box is invented by Robert Gair, a Brooklyn printer and packaging producer.
The Hurter and Driffield film speed measurement system is described.
Awards
Copley Medal: Simon NewcombCopley Medal British scientific award https://www.britannica.com/science/Copley-Medal Encyclopedia Britannica 23 July 2020 en
Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Crawford Williamson
Births
January 14 – Arthur Holmes (died 1965), English geologist.
January 19 – Ștefan Procopiu (died 1972), Romanian physicist.
January 26 – Grantly Dick-Read (died 1959), English obstetrician.
February 17 – Ronald Fisher (died 1962), English statistician and geneticist.
March 11 – Vannevar Bush (died 1974), American science administrator.
March 20 – Elizabeth Rona (died 1981), Hungarian-born nuclear chemist.
March 26 – Abner Doble (died 1961), American steam engineer.
May 4 – Carl Brigham (died 1943), American pioneer of psychometrics.
June 1 – Edward Hutchinson Synge (died 1957), Irish theoretical physicist.
December 20 – Jaroslav Heyrovský (died 1967), Czech chemist.
December 21 – Hermann Joseph Muller (died 1967), American geneticist.
Deaths
January 27 – Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (born 1833), German psychiatrist.
February 3 – C. H. D. Buys Ballot (born 1817), Dutch meteorologist.
April 1 – Alexander Mozhaysky (born 1825), Russian aeronautical pioneer.
August 30 – Marianne North (born 1830), English botanist.
December 26 – Heinrich Schliemann (born 1822), German archaeologist.
References
Category:19th century in science
Category:1890s in science