1844 in science

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

Astronomy

 * August 10 – German astronomer Friedrich Bessel deduces from the motion of the bright stars Sirius and Procyon that they have dark companions.

Biology

 * June 3 – The last definitely recorded pair of great auks (Pinguinus impennis) are killed on the Icelandic island of Eldey.
 * August 1 – Opening of Berlin Zoological Garden.
 * Gabriel Gustav Valentin notes the digestive activity of pancreatic juice.
 * George Robert Gray begins publication in London of The Genera of Birds.
 * Joseph Dalton Hooker begins publication of The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror ... 1839–1843 in London.

Chemistry

 * Karl Klaus discovers ruthenium.
 * Professor Gustaf Erik Pasch of Stockholm is granted the privilege of manufacturing a safety match.
 * French chemist Adolphe Wurtz reports the first synthesis of copper hydride, a well-known reducing agent and catalyst in organic chemistry.

Earth sciences

 * Robert Chambers' anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which paves the way for acceptance of Darwin's The Origin of Species, is published in Britain.

Mathematics

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

Medicine

 * Irish physician Francis Rynd utilises a hollow hypodermic needle to make the first recorded subcutaneous injections, specifically of a sedative to treat neuralgia.

Metrology

 * Joseph Whitworth introduces the thou.

Physics

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

Technology

 * January 30 – Charles Goodyear patents the vulcanisation of rubber in the United States.
 * May 11 – Samuel Morse sends the first message using Morse code.
 * June – Henry Fox Talbot commences publication of the first book illustrated with photographs from a camera, The Pencil of Nature.
 * Uriah A. Boyden develops an improved outward-flow water turbine.
 * Robert Bunsen invents the grease-spot photometer.
 * Thomas and Caleb Pratt design the Pratt truss bridge.
 * Dublin iron-founder Richard Turner begins assembling components for the Palm house at Kew Gardens in London, the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron.
 * Egide Walschaerts of the Belgian State Railways originates Walschaerts valve gear for the steam locomotive.

Events

 * July 27 – Death of English chemist and physicist John Dalton in Manchester where his body lies in honour in the Town Hall and more than 40,000 people file past his coffin.

Awards

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

Births

 * February 1 – G. Stanley Hall (died 1924), American psychologist.
 * February 7 – Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko (died 1873), Russian naturalist.
 * February 20 – Ludwig Boltzmann (died 1906), Austrian physicist famous for the invention of statistical mechanics.
 * March 25 – Adolf Engler (died 1930), German botanist.
 * June 10 – Carl Hagenbeck (died 1913), German zoologist.
 * July 1 – H. Newell Martin (died 1896), British physiologist.
 * August 6 – James Henry Greathead (died 1896), South African-born English civil engineer.
 * August 13 – Friedrich Miescher (died 1895), Swiss biochemist.
 * August 22 – George W. DeLong (died 1881), American Arctic explorer.
 * September 11 – Henry Alleyne Nicholson (died 1899), English paleontologist and zoologist.
 * October 3 – Patrick Manson (died 1922), Scottish parasitologist, the "father of tropical medicine".
 * October 28 – Mary Katharine Brandegee née Layne (died 1920), American botanist.
 * November 25 – Karl Benz (died 1929), German automotive engineer.
 * Varvara Rudneva (d. 1899), Russian physician.

Deaths

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