The year 1855 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.

Contents

1 Paleontology 2 Physics 3 Awards 4 Births 5 Deaths

Paleontology

• The first archaeopteryx fossil found in Bavaria, Germany

Physics

• James Clerk Maxwell unifies electricity and magnetism into a single theory, classical electromagnetism, thereby showing that light is an electromagnetic wave

Awards

• Copley Medal: Léon Foucault
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Henry De la Beche

Births

• January 5 - King Camp Gillette (d. 1932), inventor.
• January 21 - John Moses Browning (d. 1926), inventor
• January 28 - William Seward Burroughs (d. 1898), inventor of the calculator
• March 13 - Percival Lowell (d. 1916), astronomer.
• November 5 - Léon Teisserenc de Bort (d. 1913), meteorologist.

Deaths

• February 23 - Carl Friedrich Gauss (b. 1777), mathematician.
• April 13 - Henry De la Beche (b. 1796), geologist.
• July 8 - William Edward Parry (b. 1790), Arctic explorer.