The year 1826 in science and technology involved
some significant events, listed below.
== Astronomy ==
Mary Somerville presents a paper on "The Magnetic
Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar
Spectrum" to the Royal Society in London.
== Chemistry ==
Antoine Jerome Balard isolates bromine.
Pierre Jean Robiquet isolates the dye alizarin.
Michael Faraday determines the chemical formula
of naphthalene.
== Exploration ==
May 22 – HMS Beagle departs on her first
voyage from Plymouth for a hydrographic survey
of the Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego regions
of South America.
Hyacinthe de Bougainville completes a three-year
global circumnavigation.
== Mathematics ==
Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik
is founded by August Leopold Crelle in Berlin.
February – Nikolai Lobachevsky first presents
his system of non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry.
== Physiology and medicine ==
Johannes Peter Müller publishes his first
important works, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie
des Gesichtsinns ("On the comparative physiology
of sight", Leipzig) and Über die phantastischen
Gesichtserscheinungen ("On visual hallucination",
Coblenz), making a first statement of the
law of specific nerve energies.
== Technology ==
January 30 – The Menai Suspension Bridge,
built by engineer Thomas Telford, is opened
between the island of Anglesey and the mainland
of Wales.
April 1 – American inventor Samuel Morey
patents a compressionless internal combustion
engine in the United States.
June – Nicéphore Niépce produces the first
photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras.
Benoit Fourneyron develops an efficient outward-flow
water turbine.
== Zoology ==
Karl Ernst von Baer discovers the mammalian
ovum.
The Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer
first described the Asiatic lion under the
name Felis leo persicus.
The Zoological Society of London is founded
by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.
== Awards ==
Copley Medal: James South
== Births ==
January 15 – Marie Pasteur (died 1910),
French chemist.
May 26 – Richard Carrington (died 1875),
English astronomer.
June 26 – Morgan Crofton (died 1915), Irish
mathematician.
July 7 – John Fowler (died 1864), English
agricultural engineer.
July 13 – Stanislao Cannizzaro (died 1910),
Italian chemist.
September 17 – Bernhard Riemann (died 1866),
German mathematician.
October 8 – Emily Blackwell (died 1910),
American physician.
== Deaths ==
January 3 – Marie Le Masson Le Golft (born
1750), French naturalist.
January 6 – John Farey (born 1766), English
geologist.
June 7 – Joseph von Fraunhofer (born 1787),
German physicist.
July 4 – Thomas Jefferson (born 1743), Founding
Father and 3rd President of the United States
and inventor.
July 22 – Giuseppe Piazzi (born 1746), Italian
astronomer.
October 25 – Philippe Pinel (born 1745),
French psychiatrist.
November 23 – Johann Elert Bode (born 1747),
German astronomer
