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

Events

• 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.

Astronomy

• September 16 - William Cranch Bond and William Lassell discover Hyperion, Saturn's moon.
• Lord Rosse studies M1 and names it the Crab Nebula.
• Rudolf Wolf (in Zurich) devises a way of quantifying sunspot activity, the Wolf number.^[1]

Botany

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

Chemistry

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

Exploration

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

Medicine

• 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.^[2]
• 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.^[3]

Physics

• Lord Kelvin discovers the absolute zero point of temperature.
• Nicholas Callan of Maynooth College invents an improved form of battery.^[4]

Technology

• The Warren truss is patented by James Warren.
• James Bogardus erects the first free-standing cast-iron architectural fa ade, the Milhau Pharmacy Building in New York City.
• Completion of palm houses at Kew Gardens, London, and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, by Richard Turner of Dublin.
• Joseph-Louis Lambot constructs the first ferrocement boat.

Awards

• Copley Medal: John Couch Adams
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Buckland

Births

• May 23 - Otto Lilienthal (died 1896), German aviation pioneer.
• June 22 - William Macewen (died 1924), Scottish surgeon.
• November 8 - Gottlob Frege (died 1925), German mathematician.

Deaths

• January 9 - Caroline Herschel (born 1750), German astronomer.
• August 7 - J ns Jakob Berzelius (born 1779), Swedish chemist.
• August 12 - George Stephenson (born 1781), English locomotive engineer.
• December 18 - Bernard Bolzano (born 1781), Bohemian mathematician.

References

fr:1848 en science he:1848 mk:1848 no:Vitenskaps ret 1848 nn:Vitskap i 1848 ru:1848 sv:Vetenskaps ret 1848