1872 in science
overview of natural science-related events during the year of 1872
The year 1872 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Chemistry
Robert Chesebrough patents Vaseline in the United States
Eugen Baumann rediscovers polyvinyl chloride
Charles-Adolphe Wurtz discovers the aldol reaction
Conservation
March 1 – Yellowstone National Park is established in the United States, the world's first national park
Exploration
May 13–September 26 – Benjamin Leigh Smith's 1872 expedition to Jan Mayen and Svalbard
December 21 – Challenger expedition: HMS Challenger (1858) sails from Portsmouth in England on the 4-year scientific expedition that lays the foundation for the science of oceanography
Mathematics
Richard Dedekind publishes Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen, a theory of irrational numbers
Felix Klein produces the Erlangen program on geometries
Medicine
February 15 – George Huntington makes the first detailed description of Huntington's disease, in Middleport, Ohio
Moritz Kaposi describes Kaposi's sarcoma and the manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus
Ferdinand Monoyer proposes the dioptre as a unit for measuring the optical power of a lens
Physics
Ludwig Boltzmann states the Boltzmann equation for the temporal development of distribution functions in phase space, and publishes his H-theorem
Technology
April 1 – English hangman William Marwood first uses his technique of the long drop (on uxoricide William Frederick Horry at Lincoln Castle)
April 2 – George Brayton obtains a United States patent for a constant pressure internal combustion engine, initially using vaporized gas, and marketed as 'Brayton's Ready Motor'
John Hopkinson proposes the group flash system for distinguishing lighthouses
Reverend C. M. Ramus of Sussex, England, devises the single-step hydroplane hull
Institutions
October 1 – the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session
The Polytechnic Museum in Moscow is founded
Publications
May – the magazine Popular Science is first published in the United States
Charles Darwin publishes The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Awards
Copley Medal: Friedrich Woehler
Wollaston Medal for geology: James Dwight Dana
Births
April 5 – Samuel Cate Prescott (died 1962), American food scientist and microbiologist
April 21 - Charles Gandy (died 1943), French physician.
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