1858 in science

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The year 1858 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Archaeology

• In Luxor, Egypt, the Rhind papyrus is found (named for Alexander Henry Rhind, the discoverer); it is sometimes called the Ahmes papyrus for the scribe who wrote it around 1650 BC.

Astronomy

• Donati's Comet, the first comet to be photographed, is discovered by Giovanni Battista Donati on 2 June and remains visible for several months afterwards.

Darwin

Biology

• William Herschel initiates fingerprinting as a means of identification, in Bengal.^[1]
• Rudolf Virchow publishes Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre: 20 Vorlesungen, gehalten während der Monate Februar, März und April 1858 im Pathologischen Institut zu Berlin.
• George Bentham's Handbook of the British flora is published. This will be in use (in editions edited by Joseph Dalton Hooker) for a century.

Evolution

• Publication of Darwin's theory:
  • June 18 – Charles Darwin receives papers from Alfred Russel Wallace setting out the latter's theory of natural selection which he forwards to Charles Lyell.
  • July 1 – Darwin and Wallace's papers on their theories of evolution, On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection (submitted with the support of Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker) are read by John Joseph Bennett to a meeting of the Linnean Society of London. They are first published on August 20.

Exploration

• February 13 – Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke become the first Europeans to discover Lake Tanganyika.^[2]
• May 14 – Dr David Livingstone's 6-year Second Zambesi Expedition, under the patronage of the Royal Geographical Society, arrives at the African coast with the prefabricated iron paddle steamer Ma Robert.^[3]
• August 3 – John Hanning Speke discovers Lake Victoria, source of the River Nile.^[2]

Mathematics

• The Möbius strip is discovered independently by German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing.^[4][5][6]
• Arthur Cayley publishes "A memoir on the theory of matrices", introducing the modern concept of the matrix in mathematics.^[7][8][9]

Medicine

• August 2 – Medical Act 1858 passed "to Regulate the Qualifications of Practitioners in Medicine and Surgery" in the United Kingdom.
• First publication of Gray's Anatomy.
• Publication in London of Thomas B. Peacock's On Malformations, &c., of the Human Heart, with original cases which becomes a standard cardiology textbook.^[10]
• French pediatrician Eugène Bouchut develops a new technique for non-surgical orotracheal intubation to bypass laryngeal obstruction resulting from a diphtheria-related pseudomembrane.^[11]

Psychiatry

• First treatise on postpartum psychiatric disturbances, by Louis-Victor Marcé, MD.^[12]

Technology

• January 31 – I. K. Brunel's SS Great Eastern, the largest ship built to date, is launched on the River Thames using Tangye hydraulic rams.^[13]
• August – The first aerial photography is carried out by Nadar from a moored balloon in France using the collodion process.^[14]
• Hoffmann kiln patented in Germany by Friedrich Hoffmann for continuous production brickmaking.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Charles Lyell
• Wollaston Medal for geology: James Hall

Births

• January 28 – Eugène Dubois (died 1940), Dutch paleoanthropologist.
• February 7 – Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate (died 1931), Dutch anthropologist.
• March 18 – Rudolf Diesel (died 1913), German mechanical engineer.
• April 23 – Max Planck (died 1947), German theoretical physicist.
• May 19 – Thomas Allinson (died 1918), English physician and dietetic reformer.
• August 11 – Christiaan Eijkman (died 1930), Dutch physiologist.
• August 19 – Ellen Willmott (died 1934), English horticulturist.
• August 27 – Giuseppe Peano (died 1932), Italian mathematician.
• October 4 – Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin (died 1935), Banat-born physicist.
• November 1 – Ludwig Struve (died 1920), Russian astronomer.
• November 30 – Jagadish Chandra Bose (died 1937), Bengali physicist.
• Laura Forster (died 1917), Australian physician.

Deaths

• April 28 – Johannes Peter Müller (born 1801), German physiologist.
• June 10 – Robert Brown (born 1773), Scottish botanist.
• June 28 – Jane Marcet (born 1769), British popular science writer.
• November 8 – George Peacock (born 1791), English mathematician.
• December 16 – Richard Bright (born 1789), English physician.
• date unknown - Amelia Griffiths (born 1768), British phycologist.

References

1. Herschel, William J. (1916). The Origin of Finger-Printing (PDF). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-1-104-66225-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
2. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
3. "The Zambesi Expedition". Livingstone Online. Retrieved 2011-08-26.
4. Pickover, Clifford A. (2006). The Möbius Strip: Dr. August Möbius's Marvelous Band in Mathematics, Games, Literature, Art, Technology, and Cosmology. Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 1-56025-826-8.
5. Herges, Rainer (2005). "Möbius, Escher, Bach – Das unendliche Band in Kunst und Wissenschaft". Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau: 301–310. ISSN 0028-1050.
6. Rodley, Chris, ed. (1997). Lynch on Lynch. London. p. 231.
7. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London) 148 (1858). Repr. Cayley, Arthur (2009) [1889]. The Collected Mathematical Papers. Cambridge Library Collection – Mathematics. 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 475–96. ISBN 978-1-108-00507-4. archive.
8. Dieudonné, Jean, ed. (1978). "III". Abrégé d'histoire des mathématiques 1700-1900. 1. Paris: Hermann. p. 96.
9. Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 156. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
10. "Thomas Bevill Peacock (1812-1882), 19th Century Cardiologist" (PDF). Journal of the American Medical Association. 203 (9): 801. 1968. doi:10.1001/jama.1968.03140090185016. Retrieved 2011-03-30.
11. Bouchut, E. (1858). "D'une nouvelle méthode de traitement du croup par le tubage du larynx" [On a new method of treatment for croup by larynx intubation]. Bulletin de l'Académie Impériale de Médecine (in French). 23: 1160–2. Retrieved 2010-09-06.
12. Trede K, Baldessarini RJ, Viguera AC, Bottero A (2009). "Treatise on insanity in pregnant, postpartum, and lactating women (1858) by Louis-Victor Marcé: a commentary". Harvard Review of Psychiatry. 17 (2): 157–65. doi:10.1080/10673220902891802. PMID 19373623. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
13. "ss Great Eastern". Brunel 200. 2006. Archived from the original on 2011-07-08. Retrieved 2011-06-29.
14. "Brief history of aerial photography". www.findaerialphotography.com. 2007. Retrieved 2015-01-02.