1807 in science

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The year 1807 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• March 29 – H. W. Olbers discovers the asteroid which Carl Friedrich Gauss names Vesta.^[1]

Chemistry

• Potassium and sodium are isolated by Sir Humphry Davy.
• The use of fulminate in firearms is patented by the Rev. Alexander John Forsyth of Scotland.^[2]

Geology

• The Geological Society is founded in London; among the more prominent founders are William Babington, James Parkinson, Humphry Davy and George Bellas Greenough.

Mathematics

• William Wallace proves that any two simple polygons of equal area are equidecomposable, later known as the Bolyai–Gerwien theorem.^[3]

Medicine

• Samuel Hahnemann first introduces the term 'homeopathy' in an essay, "Indications of the Homeopathic Employment of Medicines in Ordinary Practice", published in Versammlung der Hufelandische medicinisch-chirurgischen Gesellschaft.^[4]

Technology

• July 20 – French brothers Claude and Nicéphore Niépce receive a patent for their Pyréolophore, an early internal combustion engine, having demonstrated it powering a boat on the Saône.
• August 17 – Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat makes her first trip from New York to Albany.
• November 19 – English inventor Lionel Lukin launches the world's first sailing self-righting rescue life-boat, the Frances Anne, at Lowestoft.^[5]
• William Cubitt patents self-regulating sails for windmills.^[6]
• Henry Maudslay patents an improved table engine.
• William Hyde Wollaston patents the camera lucida.^[7]

Zoology

• April 21 – The Tasmanian devil is first described, by George Prideaux Robert Harris.^[8]

Publications

• Alexander von Humboldt's Le Voyage aux Régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804, par Alexandre de Humboldt et Aimé Bonpland begins publication.
• Thomas Young's A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts published.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Everard Home

Births

• May 28 – Louis Agassiz, zoologist and geologist (died 1873)
• November 14 – Auguste Laurent, chemist (died 1853)

Deaths

• April 4 – Joseph Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande, French astronomer (born 1732)

References

1. "4 Vesta". JPL Small-Body Database Browser. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Retrieved 2011-08-09.
2. "Rifled Breech Loader". globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 22 September 2011.
3. Stewart, Ian (1996). From Here to Infinity (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-19-283202-3.
4. Gumpert, Martin (1945). Hahnemann: the Adventurous Career of a Medical Rebel (English-language ed.). New York: Fischer. p. 130.
5. Malster, Robert, ed. (2013). The Minute Books of the Suffolk Humane Society... and the world's first sailing lifeboat. Suffolk Records Society, vol. 56. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-84383-805-0.
6. Brown, Peter. "Sir William Cubitt (1785-1861)". Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
7. Hammond, John; Austin, Jill (1987). The camera lucida in art and science. Taylor & Francis.
8. Harris, G. P. (1807). "Description of two new Species of Didelphis from Van Diemen's Land". Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 9: 174–78. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1818.tb00336.x. Retrieved 2015-12-10.