1891 in science

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The year 1891 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• The New Zealand government sets aside Resolution Island in Fiordland as a nature reserve.^[1]
• The New York Botanical Garden is founded in The Bronx largely due to the efforts of Nathaniel Lord Britton.
• Jane Willis Kirkaldy and Catherine Pollard become the first women to sit final examinations in biology at the University of Oxford (and achieve first class honours).^[2]

Chemistry

• Agnes Pockels first publishes the results of her researches into surface tension.^[3][4]

Environment

• The Japan Meteorological Agency begins taking records of the global average temperature.^[5]

Mathematics

• Fyodorov–Schoenflies theorem concluded by Yevgraf Fyodorov and Arthur Schoenflies from their work on crystallographic groups.^[6][7]

Medicine

• Julius Ludwig August Koch begins publication of Die psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten in Ravensburg, introducing the concept of psychopathology.^[8]
• Arnold Pick first uses the term dementia praecox in this form.^[9]
• The earliest recorded attempt at hip replacement is carried out by Themistocles Gluck in Berlin, using ivory to replace the femoral head.^[10]

Paleontology

• October – Eugène Dubois finds the first fragmentary bones of Pithecanthropus erectus (later redesignated Homo erectus), or 'Java Man', at Trinil on the Solo River.^[11]

Technology

• March 10 – Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, is granted a patent in the United States^[12] for an automatic telephone exchange using the Strowger switch.^[13]
• March 15 – Jesse W. Reno patents the first escalator at Coney Beach in the United States.
• May 20 – First public demonstration of the Kinetograph moving picture system developed by W. K. L. Dickson under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison, a showing of the film known as Dickson Greeting. Edison files patents on the camera and peephole viewer on August 24.^[14]
• Michelin patent the removable pneumatic bicycle tire.^[15]
• Panhard et Levassor produce the first Système Panhard automobile layout, consisting of four wheels with front-engine, rear-wheel drive and a sliding-gear transmission, designed by Émile Levassor.^[16]
• William Le Baron Jenney develops the construction of steel frame skyscrapers in Chicago with the Ludington, Manhattan and Second Leiter Buildings.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Stanislao Cannizzaro
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: John Wesley Judd

Births

• July 5 – John Howard Northrop (suicide 1987), American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1946)
• September 14 – Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov (died 1983), Russian mathematician.
• September 24 – W. F. Friedman (died 1969), Bessarabian-born cryptanalyst.
• October 24 – Ernest Melville DuPorte (died 1981), Caribbean-born Canadian insect morphologist.
• November 14 – Frederick Banting (died 1941), Canadian discoverer of insulin, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1923)

Deaths

• February 10 – Sofia Kovalevskaya (born 1850), mathematician.
• May 11 – Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (born 1820), physicist.
• June 9 – Henry Edwards (born 1827), entomologist and actor.
• June 23
  • Sir Norman Pogson (born 1829), astronomer.
  • Wilhelm Eduard Weber (born 1804), physicist.
• September 18 – William Ferrel (born 1817), meteorologist.
• November 18 – Joseph Wolstenholme (born 1829), mathematician.
• December 21 – William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire (born 1808), landowner and promoter of science.

References

1. Hill, Susanne; John (1987). Richard Henry of Resolution Island. Dunedin: John McIndoe. ISBN 0-86868-094-X.
2. "The female firsts". Oxford Today. 22 (1). 29 September 2009. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2011-08-12.
3. Pockels, Agnes (1891). "Surface tension". Nature. 43: 437–439. doi:10.1038/043437c0.
4. Giles, C. H.; Forrester, S. D. (9 January 1971). "The origins of the surface film balance: Studies in the early history of surface chemistry, part 3". Chemistry & Industry: 43–53.
5. "Annual Anomalies of Global Average Surface Temperature (1891 - 2013)". JMA. 14 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
6. Senechal, Marjorie (1990). "A brief history of geometrical crystallography". In Lima-de-Faria, J. Historical Atlas of Crystallography. Kluwer. pp. 43–59. ISBN 0-7923-0649-X.
7. Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 153. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
8. Ronson, Jon (2011-05-21). "How to spot a psychopath". Guardian Weekend: 31.
9. "Ueber primäre chronische Demenz (so. Dementia praecox) im jugendlichen Alter". Prager medicinische Wochenschrift. 16: 312–15. 1891.
10. Gomez, Pablo F.; Morcuende, Jose A. (2005). "Early attempts at hip arthroplasty, 1700s to 1950s". Iowa Orthopaedic Journal. 25: 25–9. PMC 1888777. PMID 16089067.
11. Carroll, Sean B. (2009). Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species. London: Quercus. pp. 90–91. ISBN 978-1-84916-072-8.
12. US 447918 
13. Hill, Roger B. (March 1953). "The Early Years of the Strowger System". Bell Laboratories Record. 31 (3): 95–103. Retrieved 2011-11-03.
14. Mannoni, Laurent; Campagnoni, Donata Pesenti; Robinson, David (1996). Light and Movement: Incunabula of the Motion Picture, 1420–1896. London: BFI. ISBN 88-86155-05-0.
15. Lloyd, John; Mitchinson, John (2010). The Second Book of General Ignorance. London: Faber. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-571-26965-5.
16. Georgano, G. N., ed. (1982). Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars. London: Ebury Press. ISBN 0-85223-234-9.