The year 1874 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• December 9 - A transit of Venus across the Sun is observed in Muddapur, India, by an astronomical expedition led by Pietro Tacchini.

Chemistry

• Per Teodor Cleve discovers that didymium is in fact two elements, now known as neodymium and praseodymium.
• Othmar Zeidler synthesises DDT.^[1]
• Carl Schorlemmer publishes ''A Manual of Chemistry of the Carbon Compounds; or, Organic Chemistry''.^[2]
• Jacobus van 't Hoff and Achille Le Bel independently propose that organic molecular models can be three-dimensional.^[3]

History of science

• John William Draper publishes History of the Conflict between Religion and Science.

Mathematics

• Georg Cantor's paper, " ber eine Eigenschaft des Inbegriffes aller reellen algebraischen Zahlen" ("On a Characteristic Property of All Real Algebraic Numbers"), published in Crelle's Journal, considered as the origin of set theory.^[4]
• W. Stanley Jevons publishes his comprehensive treatise on logic, The Principles of Science.^[5]
• Sofia Kovalevskaya is awarded a doctorate in mathematics at the University of G ttingen, the first woman in Europe to hold that degree. Her submission includes a paper on partial differential equations containing a presentation of the Cauchy-Kovalevski theorem.^[6]

Medicine

• Autumn - London School of Medicine for Women founded.^[7]
• A. T. Still introduces osteopathic medicine in the United States.^[8]

Neuroscience

• Vladimir Alekseyevich Betz describes giant pyramidal cells in the motor cortex, later called Betz cells.

Physics

• James Clerk Maxwell produces a model of Maxwell's thermodynamic surface.^[9]

Psychology

• Franz Brentano publishes Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte ("Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint").

Technology

• July 4 - Official opening of Eads Bridge (combined road and rail steel arch) over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, designed by James B. Eads. It is the longest arch bridge in the world at this time, with an overall length of 6,442 feet (1,964 m); the first use of true steel as a primary structural material in a major bridge project;^[10] the first built using cantilever support methods exclusively; and the first major project to make use of pneumatic caissons.
• Invention of barbed wire by Joseph Glidden.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Louis Pasteur
• Wollaston Medal: Oswald Heer

Births

• January 22 - Leonard Eugene Dickson (died 1954), mathematician.
• February 2 - Ernest Shackleton (died 1922), explorer.
• April 25 - Guglielmo Marconi (died 1937), inventor.
• September 26 - Oakes Ames (died 1950), botanist.
• October 13 - Kiyotsugu Hirayama (died 1943), astronomer.
• November 27 - Chaim Weizmann (died 1952), chemist, first President of Israel.
• November 29 - Ant nio Egas Moniz, (died 1955), winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Deaths

• January 16 - Max Schultze (born 1825), physiologist.
• January 24 - Johann Philipp Reis (born 1834), physicist and inventor.
• February 17 - Adolphe Quetelet (born 1796), mathematician and astronomer.
• February 19 - Carl Ernst Bock (born 1809), physician and anatomist.
• March 14 - Johann Heinrich von M dler (born 1794), astronomer.
• March 28 - Peter Andreas Hansen (born 1795), astronomer.
• April 13 - James Bogardus (born 1800), inventor.

References

fr:1874 en science mk:1874 no:Vitenskaps ret 1874 nn:Vitskap i 1874 sv:Vetenskaps ret 1874