1882 in science

• September – Great Comet of 1882 sighted.{{cite journal|last=Plummer|first=William Edward|title=The great comet of September 1882|journal=The Observatory |volume=12|pages=140–142|bibcode=1889Obs....12..140P |date=March 1889}}
• December 6 – Transit of Venus, 1882.

File:Great Comet of 1882.jpg as seen from Cape Town by David Gill]]

• March 24 – Robert Koch announces his discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis.Koch, Robert (1882-03-24). "Die Ätiologie der Tuberkulose". Presented to Physiologische Gesellschaft zu Berlin.
• Élie Metchnikoff discovers phagocytosis.{{cite journal|first=Alexander|last=Petrunkevitch|title=Russia's Contribution to Science|journal=Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences|volume=23|year=1920|page=239}}

• Italian physicist Luigi Palmieri detects helium on Earth for the first time through its D₃ spectral line when he analyzes the lava of Mount Vesuvius.{{cite book|title=Recent Advances in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry|last=Stewart|first=Alfred Walter|page=201|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pIqhPFfDMXwC&pg=PA201|publisher=BiblioBazaar, LLC|year=2008|isbn=978-0-554-80513-9}}

• Clarence Dutton's Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District is published by the United States Geological Survey.

• June – German mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann publishes proof that {{math|π}} is a transcendental number and that squaring the circle is consequently impossible.{{cite journal|last=Lindemann|first=F.|title=Über die Zahl π|journal=Mathematische Annalen|volume=20|year=1882|pages=213–225|doi=10.1007/BF01446522|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1428234}}{{cite book|first=Tony|last=Crilly|title=50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know|location=London|publisher=Quercus|year=2007|isbn=978-1-84724-008-8|pages=21, 81}}
• December – Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler establishes the journal Acta Mathematica.
• Felix Klein first describes the Klein bottle.

• March 28 – Paul Beiersdorf patents an adhesive bandage in Germany, the foundation of the Beiersdorf company.
• Vladimir Bekhterev publishes Provodiashchie puti mozga ("The Conduction Paths in the Brain and Spinal Cord"), beginning to note the role of the hippocampus in memory.

• January 12 – Holborn Viaduct power station in the City of London, the world's first coal-fired public electricity generating station, begins operation.{{cite journal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bfVKt7UzjnEC&pg=PA89|journal=New Scientist|location=London|title=The electricity of Holborn|first=Jack|last=Harris|date=1982-01-14}}
• By March – Étienne-Jules Marey invents a chronophotographic gun capable of photographing 12 consecutive frames per second on the same plate.
• April 29 – Werner von Siemens demonstrates his Electromote, the first form of trolleybus, in Berlin.
• June 6 – Henry W. Seeley patents the electric clothes iron in the United States.Patent no. 259,054. {{cite web|title=Household Amenities and Appliances: Timeline of Their Arrival|url=http://www.partselect.ca/resources/Appliances-Timeline-Of-Their-Arrival.aspx|publisher=PartSelect|accessdate=2012-01-25}}
• September 4 – Thomas Edison starts the United States' first commercial electrical power plant, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan.
• English mechanical engineer James Atkinson invents his "Differential Engine".
• American electrical engineer Schuyler Wheeler produces an electric fan.
• Alfred P. Southwick publishes his proposals for use of the electric chair as an execution method in the United States.
• Nikola Tesla claims this is when he conceives the rotating magnetic field principle, which he later uses to invent his induction motor.{{cite book|title=Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930|publisher=JHU Press|location=Baltimore, MD|page=117|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g07Q9M4agp4C&pg=PA117|isbn=978-0-8018-4614-4|year=1993|access-date=2015-12-13|archive-date=2024-03-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323123125/https://books.google.com/books?id=g07Q9M4agp4C&pg=PA117#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live|first=Thomas Parke|last=Hughes}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1AsFdUxOwu8C&pg=PA204|editor-first=Robert|editor-last=Bud|title=Instruments of Science: An Historical Encyclopedia|page=204|access-date=2013-03-18|isbn=978-0-8153-1561-2|year=1998|publisher=Taylor & Francis|archive-date=2024-03-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323123051/https://books.google.com/books?id=1AsFdUxOwu8C&pg=PA204#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}

• First International Polar Year, an international scientific program, begins.
• The Chartered Institute of Patent Agents, the modern-day Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, is founded in the United Kingdom.

• Copley Medal: Arthur Cayley{{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: Franz Ritter von Hauer

• March 14 – Wacław Sierpiński (died 1969), Polish mathematician.
• March 23 – Emmy Noether (died 1935), German mathematician.
• March 30 – Melanie Klein (died 1960), Viennese-born psychoanalyst.
• April 27 – Harry Allan (died 1957), New Zealand botanist.
• June 17 – Harold Gillies (died 1960), New Zealand-born plastic surgeon.
• July 12 – Traian Lalescu (died 1929), Romanian mathematician.
• July 21 – Herbert E. Ives (died 1953), American optical engineer.
• September 30 – Hans Geiger (died 1945), German inventor of the Geiger counter.
• October 5 – Robert Goddard (died 1945), American rocket scientist.
• October 26 – Marietta Pallis (died 1963), Indian-born Graeco-British ecologist.
• November 18 – Frances Gertrude McGill (died 1959), pioneering Canadian forensic pathologist.
• December 11 – Max Born (died 1970), German physicist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954.
• December 28 – Arthur Eddington (died 1944), English astrophysicist.
• Israel Aharoni (died 1946), Belarusian-born Jewish zoologist.

• January 11 – Theodor Schwann (born 1810), German physiologist.
• April 19 – Charles Darwin (born 1809), English naturalist and geologist.
• August 24 – John Dillwyn Llewelyn (born 1810), Welsh botanist and photographer.
• September 23 – Friedrich Wöhler (born 1800), German chemist.
• October 27 – Christian Heinrich von Nagel (born 1803), German geometer.
• November 20 – Henry Draper (born 1837), doctor, American astronomer.
• December 24
• Johann Benedict Listing (born 1808), German mathematician.
• Charles Vincent Walker (born 1812), English telegraph engineer.

{{reflist}}

Category:19th century in science

Category:1880s in science