1859 in science

• May 26 & June 2 – Geologist Joseph Prestwich and amateur archaeologist John Evans report (to the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries of London, respectively) the results of their investigations of gravel-pits in the Somme valley and elsewhere, extending human history back to what will become known as the Paleolithic Era.{{cite journal |first=Joseph |last=Prestwich |title=On the Occurrence of Flint-implements, associated with the Remains of Animals of Extinct Species in Beds of a late Geological Period, in France at Amiens and Abbeville, and in England at Hoxne |journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society |volume=150 |pages=277–317 |doi=10.1098/rstl.1860.0018 |date=January 1860 |hdl=2027/chi.098241705 |s2cid=111126826 |hdl-access=free }}{{cite journal|first=John |last=Evans |title=On the Occurrence of Flint Implements in undisturbed Beds of Gravel, Sand, and Clay |journal=Archaeologia |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=280–307 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/1428686/files/article.pdf |access-date=2012-02-24 |archive-url= |archive-date= |url-status= |date=January 1860 |doi=10.1017/s0261340900001454 }}

• August 28–September 2 – The solar storm of 1859, the largest geomagnetic solar storm on record, causes the Northern lights aurora to be visible as far south as Cuba and knocks out telegraph communication. This is also called the Carrington event, Richard Carrington being the first known person to observe solar flares, due to this storm. It is also the first major solar radiation storm to be recorded.{{cite book|first=Philip C.|last=Plait|author-link=Phil Plait|title=Death from the Skies! – these are the ways the world will end|location=New York|publisher=Viking Penguin|year=2008|isbn=978-0-670-01997-7|title-link=Death from the Skies}}
• Marian Albertovich Kowalski publishes the first usable method to deduce the rotation of the Milky Way.Recherches astronomiques de l'observatoire de Kasan.
• English clergyman Thomas William Webb publishes the first edition of his popular amateur guide Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes.
• Attempting to explain Mercury's solar orbit, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier proposes the existence of a hypothetical planet, Vulcan, inside its orbit and amateur astronomer Edmond Modeste Lescarbault claims to have observed it on March 26.{{cite book|title=In Search of Planet Vulcan, the Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Machine|last1=Baum|first1=Richard|last2=Sheehan|first2=William|year=1997|publisher=Plenum Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-306-45567-4|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/insearchofplanet0000baum}}

Image:Origin of Species title page.jpg

• March 21 – The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania issues the charter establishing the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, the first organization of its kind in the United States and founder of the nation's first zoo.
• November 3 – Alfred Russel Wallace's paper "On the Zoological geography of the Malay Archipelago", introducing the Wallace Line, is read by Charles Darwin to the Linnean Society of London.Published in Journal of the Proceedings of the Society vol. IV, Zoology, no. 16 (10 February 1860) p. 172.
• November 24 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
• December – Joseph Dalton Hooker's Introductory Essay to the Flora Tasmaniae supports Darwin's theories.
• Pollen is identified as the cause of allergic rhinitis by Charles Harrison Blackley.{{cite news|first=Justin|last=Parkinson|title=John Bostock: The man who 'discovered' hay fever|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28038630|access-date=2018-06-10|work=BBC News Magazine|date=2014-07-01|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150731221944/http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28038630|archive-date=2015-07-31}}
• Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, in the second volume of Histoire naturelle générale des Règnes organiques, introduces the term ethology.Oxford English Dictionary.
• Wilhelm Peters first describes the guppy (fish Poecilia reticulata) from Venezuela.
• Rudolf Virchow publishes Vorlesungen über Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologischer und pathologischer Gewebelehre, a major textbook on cellular pathology.{{Cite Americana|wstitle=Virchow, Rudolf|year=1920}}

• Benjamin Collins Brodie reports the highly lamellar structure of thermally reduced graphite oxide.{{cite journal|last=Brodie|first=B. C.|year=1859|title=On the Atomic Weight of Graphite|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|volume=149|pages=249–259|bibcode=1859RSPT..149..249B|jstor=108699|doi=10.1098/rstl.1859.0013|doi-access=free}}{{cite journal|last=Geim |first=A. K.|year=2012 |title=Graphene Prehistory|journal=Physica Scripta|volume=T146|pages=1–4|bibcode=2012PhST..146a4003G|doi=10.1088/0031-8949/2012/T146/014003|doi-access=free}}
• Aleksandr Butlerov discovers hexamine.
• August von Hofmann isolates sorbic acid.
• Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen invent an improved spectroscope.{{cite journal|title=The discovery of the elements. XIII. Some spectroscopic discoveries|pages=1413–1434|last=Weeks|first=Mary Elvira|author-link=Mary Elvira Weeks|doi=10.1021/ed009p1413|journal=Journal of Chemical Education|volume=9|issue=8|year=1932|bibcode=1932JChEd...9.1413W}}{{cite web|title=Robert Bunsen|url=http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/robertbunsen.html|work=infoplease|publisher=Pearson Education|year=2007|access-date=2011-11-21}}
• Pinacol is discovered through Pinacol coupling reaction by Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig.

• John Tyndall discovers that some gases block infrared radiation. He suggests that changes in the concentration of these gases could bring climate change.{{cite web|url=http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timeline.htm|title=The Discovery of Global Warming|work=American Institute of Physics|date=February 2013|access-date=8 August 2013|archive-date=13 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160113025916/https://www.aip.org/history/climate/timeline.htm|url-status=dead}}

• The Royal Geographical Society of London is granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria.
• French mathematician Nicolas Auguste Tissot first proposes Tissot's indicatrix in cartography.

• Emanoil Bacaloglu develops the "Bacaloglu pseudosphere".{{cite journal|title=Romanian Inventions|journal=The Reminder|issue=46|date=June 1983|page=3 (suppl.)}}
• Arthur Cayley produces the first Cayley–Klein metric.{{Citation|last=Cayley|first=Arthur|title=A sixth memoir upon quantics|jstor=108690|id=Collected Math. Papers, volume 2|year=1859|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|issn=0080-4614|volume=149|pages=61–90|bibcode = 1859RSPT..149...61C|doi=10.1098/rstl.1859.0004|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1432432|doi-access=free}}
• Bernhard Riemann publishes his paper on number theory, {{sic|hide=y|Ueber}} die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen {{sic|hide=y|Grösse}} ("On the Number of Primes Less Than a Given Magnitude")Monatsberichte der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (November 1859). including the Riemann zeta function and Riemann hypothesis.

• Florence Nightingale publishes Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not in London.{{cite web|url=http://search.eb.com/women/article-9404148|publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica|title=Florence Nightingale: Notes on Nursing|work=300 Women Who Changed the World|access-date=2011-10-12}}
• District nursing begins in Liverpool, England, when philanthropist William Rathbone employs Mary Robinson to nurse the sick poor in their own homes.

• May 2 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge for the Cornwall Railway at Saltash in England is officially opened.{{cite book|author=Binding, John|title=Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge|year=1997|publisher=Twelveheads Press|location=Truro|isbn=978-0-906294-39-0}}
• November 24 – French ironclad Gloire launched, the first ocean-going ironclad battleship.
• Thomas Aveling of Rochester, Kent, England, produces the first traction engine, by modification of an existing machine.{{cite book|last=Bonnett|first=Harold|title=Discovering Traction Engines|publisher=Shire Publications|location=Princes Risborough|edition=rev.|year=1975|page=5|isbn=978-0-85263-318-2}}
• Étienne Lenoir, working in Paris, produces the first single-cylinder two-stroke Lenoir cycle gas engine with an electric ignition system.Patented 1860. {{cite book|last=Wise|first=David Burgess|chapter=Lenoir: The Motoring Pioneer|editor=Ward, Ian|title=The World of Automobiles|location=London|publisher=Orbis Publishing|year=1974}}

• Gustav Kirchhoff first states Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation in several papers.

• February 23 – William Armstrong created a Knight Bachelor
• Copley Medal: Wilhelm Weber{{cite web |title=Copley Medal {{!}} British scientific award |url=https://www.britannica.com/science/Copley-Medal |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date=23 July 2020 |language=en}}
• Wollaston Medal for geology: Charles Darwin

• January 8 – Fanny Bullock Workman (died 1925), American mountaineer, explorer and cartographer.
• January 19 – Alice Eastwood (died 1953), Canadian-born botanist.
• February 14
• George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. (died 1896), American civil engineer, inventor of the Ferris wheel.
• Henry Valentine Knaggs (died 1954), English practitioner of naturopathic medicine.
• February 19 – Svante Arrhenius (died 1927), Swedish winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• February 28 – Florian Cajori (died 1930), Swiss historian of mathematics.
• March 4 – Alexander Stepanovich Popov (died 1906), Russian physicist.
• March 10 – Frank Leverett (died 1943), American glaciologist.
• March 14 – Dorothea Pertz (died 1939), English botanist.
• April 7 – Jacques Loeb (died 1924), German physiologist.
• May 15 – Pierre Curie (died 1906), French winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• May 18 – Harry Fielding Reid (died 1944), American geophysicist.
• May 28 – Edward Hopkinson (died 1922), English electrical engineer.
• June 25 – Gerhard Heilmann (died 1946), Danish paleo-ornithologist.
• July 31 – Theobald Smith (died 1934), American bacteriologist.
• September 7 – Margaret Crosfield (died 1952), British palaeontologist and geologist.
• November 22 – Cecilia Grierson (died 1934), Argentine physician and reformer.

• May 1 – John Walker (born 1781), English chemist.
• May 5 – Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (born 1805), German mathematician.
• May 6 – Alexander von Humboldt (born 1769), German naturalist and explorer.
• June 8 – Walter Hunt (born 1796), American inventor.
• July 8 – Charlotte von Siebold (born 1788), German gynecologist.
• September 10 – Thomas Nuttall (born 1786), English naturalist.
• September 15 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel (born 1806), British civil engineer.
• October 12 – Robert Stephenson (born 1803), English railway engineer.

{{reflist}}

Category:19th century in science

Category:1850s in science