- 1850 in science
The year 1850 in
science andtechnology involved some significant events, listed below.Physics
*
Rudolf Clausius publishes his paper on the mechanical theory of heat, which first states the basic ideas of thesecond law of thermodynamics .
*Hippolyte Fizeau and E. Gounelle measure the speed ofelectricity .
*Léon Foucault demonstrates the greater speed of light in air than in water, and to establish that thespeed of light in different media is inversely as the refractive indices of the media (seeFizeau-Foucault Apparatus ).Awards
*
Copley Medal :Peter Andreas Hansen
*Wollaston Medal :William Hopkins Births
*
January 15 -Sofia Kovalevskaya (d. 1891),mathematician .
*May 18 -Oliver Heaviside (d. 1925),physicist .
*June 6 -Karl Ferdinand Braun (d. 1918),physicist .
*August 25 -Charles Robert Richet (d. 1935),Nobel Prize winner.Deaths
*
March 27 -Wilhelm Beer (b. 1797),astronomer .
*May 10 -Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (b. 1778),chemist andphysicist .
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