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The year 1826 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

  • Mary Somerville presents a paper on "The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum" to the Royal Society in London.

Chemistry

  • Otto Unverdorben first isolates aniline, by destructive distillation of indigo; he calls it Crystallin.
  • Antoine Jerome Balard isolates bromine.
  • Pierre Jean Robiquet isolates the dye alizarin.
  • Michael Faraday determines the chemical formula of naphthalene.

Exploration

  • May 22 – departs on her first voyage from Plymouth for a hydrographic survey of the Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego regions of South America.
  • Hyacinthe de Bougainville completes a three-year global circumnavigation.

Mathematics

  • Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik is founded by August Leopold Crelle in Berlin.
  • February 23 – Nikolai Lobachevsky first presents his system of non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry.

Physiology and medicine

  • Johannes Peter Müller publishes his first important works, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtsinns ("On the comparative physiology of sight", Leipzig) and Über die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen ("On visual hallucination", Coblenz), making a first statement of the law of specific nerve energies.

Technology

  • January 30 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, built by engineer Thomas Telford, is opened between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales.
  • April 1 – American inventor Samuel Morey patents a compressionless internal combustion engine in the United States.
  • June – Nicéphore Niépce produces the first photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras.
  • Benoit Fourneyron develops an efficient outward-flow water turbine.
  • James Sharp of Northampton in England patents a practical form of gas stove.

Zoology

  • Karl Ernst von Baer discovers the mammalian ovum.
  • The Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer first describes the Asiatic lion under the name Felis leo persicus.
  • The Zoological Society of London is founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.

Awards

  • Copley Medal: James South

Births

  • January 15 – Marie Pasteur (died 1910), French chemist.
  • May 26 – Richard Carrington (died 1875), English astronomer.
  • June 26 – Morgan Crofton (died 1915), Irish mathematician.
  • July 7 – John Fowler (died 1864), English agricultural engineer.
  • July 13 – Stanislao Cannizzaro (died 1910), Italian chemist.
  • August 21 – Carl Gegenbaur (died 1903), German anatomist.
  • September 17 – Bernhard Riemann (died 1866), German mathematician.
  • October 8 – Emily Blackwell (died 1910), American physician.
  • Alphonse de Polignac (died 1863), French mathematician.

Deaths

  • January 3 – Marie Le Masson Le Golft (born 1750), French naturalist.
  • January 6 – John Farey (born 1766), English geologist.
  • March 28 - Jean-Baptiste Dumangin (born 1744), French physician.
  • June 7 – Joseph von Fraunhofer (born 1787), German physicist.
  • June 30 - Clément Joseph Tissot (born 1747), French physician and physiotherapist.
  • July 4 – Thomas Jefferson (born 1743), Founding Father and 3rd President of the United States and inventor.
  • July 22 – Giuseppe Piazzi (born 1746), Italian astronomer.
  • August 13 - René Laennec (born 1781), French physician and musician.
  • September 6 - Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri (born 1772), Italian surgeon.
  • October 25 – Philippe Pinel (born 1745), French psychiatrist.
  • November 23 – Johann Elert Bode (born 1747), German astronomer.
  • November 24 - Clarke Abel (born 1780), British surgeon and naturalist.

References