1844 in science - Definition and Overview

The year 1844 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.

Astronomy

• Friedrich Bessel explains the wobbling motions of Sirius and Procyon by suggesting that these stars have dark companions

Biology

• Gabriel Gustav Valentin notes the digestive activity of pancreatic juice

Chemistry

• Karl Klaus discovers ruthenium

Mathematics

• Joseph Liouville finds the first transcendental number
• Hermann Grassmann studys vectors with more than three dimensions

Technology

• May 11 - Samuel Morse send the first message using Morse code
• William Fox Talbot publishes the first photographic book, The Pencil of Nature

Awards

• Copley Medal: Carlo Matteucci
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Conybeare

Births

• March 25 - Adolf Engler (d. 1930), German botanist.
• April 20 - Ludwig Boltzmann (d. 1906), Austrian physicist famous for the invention of statistical mechanics.
• August 6 - James Henry Greathead (d. 1896), British civil engineer.
• August 13 - Friedrich Miescher (d. 1895), Swiss biologist.
• August 22 - George Washington De Long (d. 1881), Arctic explorer.
• September 11 - Henry Alleyne Nicholson (d. 1899), British palaeontologist and zoologist.
• October 3 - Sir Patrick Manson (d. 1922), Scottish parasitologist, the "father of tropical medicine" .
• November 25 - Karl Benz (d. 1929), German automobile engineer.

Deaths

• June 19 - Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (b. 1772), French naturalist.
• July 27 - John Dalton (b. 1766), English chemist and physicist.
• August 30 - Francis Baily (b. 1774), English astronomer.
• December 28 - Thomas Henderson (b. 1798), Scottish astronomer.