1848 in science

The year 1848 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

EventsEdit

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Rudolf Wolf (in Zürich) devises a way of quantifying sunspot activity, the Wolf number.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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

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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Rudolf Virchow produces a Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia advocating broad social as well as public health measures to counter such outbreaks.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Lord Kelvin establishes concept of absolute zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Nicholas Callan of Maynooth College invents an improved form of battery.<ref>Year-book of Facts. 1848.</ref>
Hippolyte Fizeau and John Scott Russell present studies of the Doppler effect in electromagnetic and sound waves respectively.<ref>Fizeau, Hippolyte. "Acoustique et optique". Unpublished lecture to Société Philomathique (Paris), 29 December 1848; Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
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).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
John Stringfellow flies a steam-powered monoplane model for a short distance in a powered glide in England.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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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.