1854 in science

The year 1854 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

 * July 22 – Discovery of the asteroid 30 Urania by John Russell Hind.
 * October c. – George Airy calculates the mean density of the Earth by measuring the gravity in a coal mine in South Shields.

Chemistry

 * Benjamin Silliman of Yale University is the first person to fractionate petroleum into its individual components by distillation.

Exploration

 * January 4 – First definite sighting of McDonald Islands in the Antarctic.

Mathematics

 * March 26 – Playfair cipher first demonstrated, by Charles Wheatstone.
 * George Boole's work on algebraic logic, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities, published in London.
 * Arthur Cayley states the original version of Cayley's theorem and produces the first Cayley table.
 * Bernhard Riemann, a German mathematician, submits his habilitation thesis Ueber die Darstellbarkeit einer Function durch eine trigonometrische Reihe ("About the representability of a function by a trigonometric series"), in which he describes the Riemann integral. It is published by Richard Dedekind in 1867.

Medicine

 * April–May – Dr John Snow traces the source of one outbreak of cholera in London (which kills 500) to a single water pump, validating his theory that cholera is water-borne, and forming the starting point for epidemiology.
 * November – Florence Nightingale and her team of trained volunteer nurses arrive at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari in the Ottoman Empire to care for British Army troops invalided from the Crimean War.
 * Spanish-born vocal pedagogist Manuel García observes his own functioning glottis using a form of laryngoscope incorporating mirrors.
 * Claude Bernard introduces the term Milieu intérieur in physiology.

Microbiology

 * Filippo Pacini, an Italian anatomist, discovers Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes cholera.
 * Louis Pasteur begins studying fermentation at the request of brewers.

Technology

 * May 9 – Albert Fink patents the Fink truss in the United States.
 * May 17 – Deck of Wheeling Suspension Bridge in the United States destroyed through torsional movement and vertical undulations in a severe windstorm.
 * June 13 – Anthony Faas patents improvements to the accordion in the United States.
 * July – First voyage by a seagoing steamship fitted with a compound steam engine, the screw steamer Brandon, built on the River Clyde in Scotland by John Elder.
 * September 19 – Thaddeus Hyatt patents a practical pavement light.
 * November 27 – André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri patents a method of producing carte de visite photographs in France.
 * December 20 – In the case of Talbot v. Laroche, pioneer of photography Henry Fox Talbot fails in asserting that the collodion process infringes his calotype patent.
 * James Ambrose Cutting takes out three United States patents for improvements to the wet plate collodion process (Ambrotype photography).
 * Elisha Otis completes work on the safety elevator.

Events

 * 10 June – The Crystal Palace reopens in Sydenham, South London with life-size dinosaur models in the grounds.

Awards

 * Copley Medal: Johannes Peter Müller
 * Wollaston Medal for Geology: Richard John Griffith

Births

 * January 27 – George Alexander Gibson (died 1913), Scottish physician and geologist.
 * January 29 – Fred Baker (died 1938), American physician and naturalist.
 * February 9 – Aletta Jacobs (died 1929), Dutch physician and women's suffrage activist.
 * March 4 – Napier Shaw (died 1945), English meteorologist.
 * March 15 – Emil Adolf von Behring (died 1917), German physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901.
 * March 31 – Dugald Clerk (died 1932), Scottish mechanical engineer.
 * April 28 – Phoebe Marks, later Hertha Ayrton (died 1923), English electrical engineer.
 * April 29 – Henri Poincaré (died 1912), French mathematician.
 * May 11 – Ottmar Mergenthaler (died 1899), German-born inventor.
 * June 13 – Charles Algernon Parsons (died 1931), British inventor of the steam turbine.
 * July 12 – George Eastman (suicide 1932), American photographic inventor.
 * July 23 – Birt Acres (died 1918), American-born cinematographic inventor.
 * July 28 – Victor Babeș (died 1926), Austrian-born Romanian physician and bacteriologist.
 * October 3 – Hermann Struve (died 1920), Russian-born astronomer.

Deaths

 * January 16 – Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré (born 1789), French botanist.
 * April 15 – Arthur Aikin (born 1773), English chemist and mineralogist.
 * July 6 – Georg Ohm (born 1789), German physicist.
 * September 28 – George Field (born c.1777), English colour chemist.
 * November 18 – Edward Forbes (born 1815), Manx naturalist.