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The year 1820 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

thumb|right|alt=Greenough's Geological map of England & Wales published by the Geological Society 1819|Geological Map of England & Wales by G.B Greenough, published by the Geological Society, 1819

Astronomy

  • March 10 – Astronomical Society of London is founded.
  • October 20 – Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, is founded.

Biology

  • Christian Friedrich Nasse formulates Nasse's law: hemophilia occurs only in males and is transmitted by asymptomatic females.
  • Ground is set aside for establishment of the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.

Chemistry

  • May – John Herapath draws up a partial account of the kinetic theory of gases.
  • Joseph Bienaimé Caventou and Pierre Joseph Pelletier isolate the alkaloids cinchonine and quinine from Cinchona bark.
  • Solanine is first isolated from the berries of the European black nightshade (Solanum nigrum).
  • Friedrich Accum's A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons is published in London.

Computing

  • Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar makes his "Arithmometer", the first mass-produced calculator.

Exploration

  • January 27 (NS) – The Antarctic ice sheet is sighted for the first time by Imperial Russian Navy captain Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen.
  • January 30 – Antarctica is sighted for the second time by Irish-born British Royal Navy captain Edward Bransfield in the Williams.

Geology

  • May – The Geological Society publishes a Geological Map of England & Wales by G. B. Greenough (dated 1819) as an alternative to William Smith's famous geological map of 1815. Greenough's map is produced from a collaborative effort that is skilfully edited and generally acknowledged to be more accurate than Smith's.

Physics

  • April – Hans Christian Ørsted discovers the relationship between electricity and magnetism.
  • Laws of electrodynamics are established by André-Marie Ampère.
  • Jean-Baptiste Biot and Félix Savart demonstrate the Biot–Savart law in electromagnetism.

Technology

  • July 26 – Opening of Union Chain Bridge across the River Tweed between England and Scotland, designed by Captain Samuel Brown. Its span of 449&nbsp;ft (137 metres) is the longest in the Western world at this time, and it is the first wrought iron vehicular suspension bridge of its type in Britain.
  • English inventor Thomas Hancock patents the production of fastenings using rubberized fabrics and invents the "pickling machine" (masticator) for recycling rubber scraps.
  • French engineer Jean-Victor Poncelet develops an inward-flow water turbine.

Awards

  • Copley Medal – Hans Christian Ørsted

Births

  • January 20 – Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois (died 1886), French mineralogist.
  • March 24 – Edmond Becquerel (died 1891), French physicist.
  • April 4 – David Kirkaldy (died 1897), Scottish engineer, pioneer of materials testing.
  • April 5 – Charles Harrison Blackley (died 1900), English allergist.
  • April 16 – Victor Puiseux (died 1883), French mathematician.
  • May 12 – Florence Nightingale (died 1910), Italian-born English nurse.
  • July 5 – William John Macquorn Rankine (died 1872), Scottish physicist.
  • August 2 – John Tyndall (died 1893), Irish physicist.
  • November 8 – Birdsill Holly (died 1894), American hydraulic engineer.

Deaths

  • April 15 – John Bell (born 1763), Scottish-born surgeon.
  • June 19 – Joseph Banks (born 1743), English naturalist.
  • August – Ralph Smith O’bré, Irish surgeon.
  • October 4 – Claudine Picardet (born 1735), French chemist, mineralogist, meteorologist and scientific translator.

References