1844 in science

The year 1844 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

* Friedrich Bessel explains the wobbling motions of Sirius and Procyon by suggesting that these stars have dark companions

Biology

* Gabriel Gustav Valentin notes the digestive activity of pancreatic juice

Chemistry

* Karl Klaus discovers ruthenium

Mathematics

* Joseph Liouville finds the first transcendental number
* Hermann Grassmann studies vectors with more than three dimensions

Physics

* William Robert Grove publishes "The Correlation of Physical Forces", the first comprehensive account of the conservation of energy.

Technology

* May 11 - Samuel Morse send the first message using Morse code
* William Fox Talbot publishes the first photographic book, "The Pencil of Nature"

Awards

* Copley Medal: Carlo Matteucci
* Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Conybeare

Births

* March 25 - Adolf Engler (d. 1930), German botanist.
* April 20 - Ludwig Boltzmann (d. 1906), Austrian physicist famous for the invention of statistical mechanics.
* August 6 - James Henry Greathead (d. 1896), British civil engineer.
* August 13 - Friedrich Miescher (d. 1895), Swiss biologist.
* August 22 - George Washington DeLong (d. 1881), Arctic explorer.
* September 11 - Henry Alleyne Nicholson (d. 1899), British palaeontologist and zoologist.
* October 3 - Sir Patrick Manson (d. 1922), Scottish parasitologist, the "father of tropical medicine" .
* November 25 - Karl Benz (d. 1929), German automobile pioneer and mechanical engineer

Deaths

* June 19 - Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (b. 1772), French naturalist.
* July 27 - John Dalton (b. 1766), English chemist and physicist.
* August 30 - Francis Baily (b. 1774), English astronomer.
* December 28 - Thomas Henderson (b. 1798), Scottish astronomer.