1844 in science

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The year 1844 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Friedrich Bessel explains the wobbling motions of Sirius and Procyon by suggesting that these stars have dark companions.

Biology

• August 1 - Opening of Berlin Zoological Garden.
• Gabriel Gustav Valentin notes the digestive activity of pancreatic juice.
• George Robert Gray begins publication in London of The Genera of Birds.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker begins publication of The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror ... 1839–1843 in London.

Chemistry

• Karl Klaus discovers ruthenium.
• Professor Gustaf Erik Pasch of Stockholm is granted the privilege of manufacturiing a safety match.

Earth sciences

• Robert Chambers publishes Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (anonymously).

Mathematics

• Joseph Liouville finds the first transcendental number
• Hermann Grassmann studies vectors with more than three dimensions.

Medicine

• Irish physician Francis Rynd utilises a hollow hypodermic needle to make the first recorded subcutaneous injections, specifically of a sedative to treat neuralgia.

Metrology

• Joseph Whitworth introduces the thou.

Physics

• William Robert Grove publishes The Correlation of Physical Forces, the first comprehensive account of the conservation of energy.

Technology

• January 30 - Charles Goodyear patents the vulcanisation of rubber in the United States.
• May 11 - Samuel Morse sends the first message using Morse code.
• June - Henry Fox Talbot commences publication of the first book illustrated with photographs from a camera, The Pencil of Nature.
• Uriah A. Boyden develops an improved outward-flow water turbine.
• Robert Bunsen invents the grease-spot photometer.
• Thomas and Caleb Pratt design the Pratt truss bridge.
• Dublin iron-founder Richard Turner begins assembing components for the Palm house at Kew Gardens in London, the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron.
• Egide Walschaerts of the Belgian State Railways originates Walschaerts valve gear for the steam locomotive.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Carlo Matteucci.
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Conybeare.

Births

• February 1 - G. Stanley Hall (died 1924), American psychologist.
• February 7 - Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko (died 1873), Russian naturalist.
• February 20 - Ludwig Boltzmann (died 1906), Austrian physicist famous for the invention of statistical mechanics.
• March 25 - Adolf Engler (died 1930), German botanist.
• June 10 - Carl Hagenbeck (died 1913), German zoologist.
• August 6 - James Henry Greathead (died 1896), South African-born English civil engineer.
• August 13 - Friedrich Miescher (died 1895), Swiss biologist.
• August 22 - George W. DeLong (died 1881), American Arctic explorer.
• September 11 - Henry Alleyne Nicholson (died 1899), English paleontologist and zoologist.
• October 3 - Patrick Manson (died 1922), Scottish parasitologist, the "father of tropical medicine" .
• October 28 - Mary Katharine Brandegee née Layne (died 1920), American botanist.
• November 25 - Karl Benz (died 1929), German automotive engineer.

Deaths

• June 19 - Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (born 1772), French naturalist.
• July 27 - John Dalton (born 1766), English chemist and physicist.
• August 30 - Francis Baily (born 1774), English astronomer.
• December 28 - Thomas Henderson (born 1798), Scottish astronomer.