1848 in science

• September 20 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science is set up in Pennsylvania by re-formation of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, with William Charles Redfield as its first president.

• September 16 – William Cranch Bond and William Lassell discover Hyperion, Saturn's moon.
• Lord Rosse studies M1 and names it the Crab Nebula.
• Édouard Roche calculates the Roche limit, the limiting radius of tidal destruction and tidal creation for a body held together only by its own gravity, which explains why the rings of Saturn do not condense into a satellite.{{cite web|url=http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/saturn/faq.html#roche|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19991105133931/http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/saturn/faq.html#roche|url-status=dead|archive-date=1999-11-05|title=What is the Roche limit?|work=Frequently Asked Questions About Saturn's Rings|first=Ron|last=Baalke|accessdate=2013-02-18|publisher=JPL}}
• Rudolf Wolf (in Zürich) devises a way of quantifying sunspot activity, the Wolf number.{{cite web|title=The Sun – History|url=http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/whsun.html|date=2001-11-25|accessdate=2012-01-08}}

• April 16 – Joseph Dalton Hooker arrives at Darjeeling to begin the first European plant collecting expedition in the Himalayas.

• Edward Frankland, working in Germany, discovers the organometallic compound diethylzinc.

• Admiral Nevelskoi demonstrates that the Strait of Tartary is a strait.

• September 13 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3-foot-plus (1 m) iron rod being driven through his head, providing a demonstration of the effects of damage to the brain's frontal lobe.
• November 1 – The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School, opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Alfred Baring Garrod recognises that excess uric acid in the blood is the cause of gout.{{cite journal|last=Storey|first=G. D.|title=Alfred Baring Garrod (1819-1907)|journal=Rheumatology|location=Oxford|volume=40|issue=10|pages=1189–90|pmid=11600751|doi=10.1093/rheumatology/40.10.1189|date=October 2001|doi-access=free}}
• Rudolf Virchow produces a [http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/96/12/2102 Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia] advocating broad social as well as public health measures to counter such outbreaks.{{cite journal|last=Silver|first=George A. |title=Virchow, the heroic model in medicine: health policy by accolade|journal=American Journal of Public Health|volume=77|pages=82–88|pmid=3538915|pmc=1646803 |date=January 1987 |issue=1 |doi=10.2105/AJPH.77.1.82}}

• Lord Kelvin establishes concept of absolute zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases.{{cite web|last=Weisstein|first=Eric W.|title=Kelvin, Lord William Thomson (1824–1907)|work=Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography|publisher=Wolfram Research Products|year=1996|url=http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Kelvin.html|accessdate=2007-03-12}}
• Nicholas Callan of Maynooth College invents an improved form of battery.Year-book of Facts. 1848.
• Hippolyte Fizeau and John Scott Russell present studies of the Doppler effect in electromagnetic and sound waves respectively.Fizeau, Hippolyte. "Acoustique et optique". Unpublished lecture to Société Philomathique (Paris), 29 December 1848; {{cite journal|last=Scott Russell|first=John|url=http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~chris/doppler.html|title=On certain effects produced on sound by the rapid motion of the observer|journal=Report of the Eighteen Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science|year=1848|volume=18|issue=7|pages=37–38|publisher=John Murray|location=London|accessdate=2013-07-29}}

• August 15 – James Warren submits a U.K. patent application for the Warren truss.
• James Bogardus erects the first free-standing cast-iron architectural façade, the Milhau Pharmacy Building in New York City.
• French civil engineer A. Boucher promotes the ribbed ("false") skew arch.{{cite journal|author=Boucher, A.|year=1848|title=Note sur la construction des voûtes biaises au moyen d'une série d'arcs droits accolés les uns aux autres|trans-title=Notes on the construction of skewed vaults by means of a series of right arches built one against the other|journal=Annales des Ponts et Chaussées|location=Paris|pages=234–243}}
• Completion of palm houses at Kew Gardens, London, and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, by Richard Turner of Dublin.
• Jonathan J. Couch of Philadelphia, PA, invents a "percussion drill" (jackhammer).{{cite book|first=Henry S.|last=Drinker|title=Tunneling, explosive compounds and rock drills|location=New York|publisher=Wiley|year=1878|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=CJ0gAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA153 153–157]}}
• Walter Hunt of New York patents his "Volition" repeating rifle, although it is not practicable at this time.
• Joseph-Louis Lambot constructs the first ferrocement boat, in France.
• Linus Yale Sr., invents the modern pin tumbler lock.{{cite book|title=The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive|date=21 May 2009|publisher=O'Reilly Media, Inc.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HhEC0q-O1ewC&q=Linus+Yale%2C+Sr.+modern+pin+tumbler+lock&pg=PA445|page=445|isbn=9780596555627}}
• John Stringfellow flies a steam-powered monoplane model for a short distance in a powered glide in England.{{cite journal|url=http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1956/1956%20-%200212.html|title=Henson and Stringfellow|journal=Flight|date=1956-02-24|via=Flight Global}}

• Copley Medal: John Couch Adams{{cite web |title=Copley Medal {{!}} British scientific award |url=https://www.britannica.com/science/Copley-Medal |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |accessdate=23 July 2020 |language=en}}
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Buckland

• March 8 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson (died 1919), American inventor.
• April 9 – Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti (died 1930), British-born electrical engineer and inventor
• May 23 – Otto Lilienthal (died 1896), German aviation pioneer.
• June 12 – Albertina Carlsson (died 1930) Swedish zoologist.
• June 22 – William Macewen (died 1924), Scottish surgeon.
• July 7 – Cuthbert Hilton Golding-Bird (died 1939), English surgeon.
• July 27 – Loránd Eötvös (died 1919), Hungarian physicist.
• August 14 – Margaret Lindsay (died 1915), Irish astronomer.
• November 1 – Caroline Still Anderson (died 1919), African American physician, educator and activist.
• November 8 – Gottlob Frege (died 1925), German mathematician.
• November 27 – Henry A. Rowland (died 1901), American physicist.

• January 9 – Caroline Herschel (born 1750), German astronomer.
• January 12 – Christophe-Paulin de La Poix de Fréminville (born 1787), French explorer and naturalist.
• January 24 – Horace Wells, American dentist, pioneer of the use of anesthesia, suicide (born 1815).
• August 7 – Jöns Jakob Berzelius (born 1779), Swedish chemist.
• August 12 – George Stephenson (born 1781), English locomotive engineer.
• December 18 – Bernard Bolzano (born 1781), Bohemian mathematician.

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Category:19th century in science

Category:1840s in science