1876 in science

The year 1876 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

 * December 7 – First recorded observation of the Great White Spot on Saturn, made by American astronomer Asaph Hall, who uses it to calculate the planet's rotation period.

Biology

 * Robert Koch demonstrates that Bacillus anthracis is the source of anthrax, the first bacterium conclusively shown to cause disease.
 * Koller's sickle in avian gastrulation is first described by August Rauber.
 * Francis Galton invents the silent dog whistle.
 * Meiosis is discovered and described for the first time in sea urchin eggs by the German biologist Oscar Hertwig.

Chemistry

 * Josiah Willard Gibbs publishes On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, a compilation of his work on thermodynamics and physical chemistry which lays out the concept of free energy to explain the physical basis of chemical equilibria.

Exploration

 * May 24 – End of the Challenger expedition.

Mathematics

 * Édouard Lucas demonstrates that 127 is a Mersenne prime, the largest that will be recorded for seventy-five years. He also shows that the Mersenne number 267 − 1, or M67, must have factors.

Medicine

 * February 22 – Swedish woman Karolina Olsson lapses into a form of hibernation for 32 years.
 * David Ferrier publishes The Functions of the Brain.
 * William Macewen demonstrates clinical diagnosis of the site of brain tumors and performs the first successful intercranial surgery.
 * Patrick Manson begins studying filariasis infection in humans.
 * Meharry Medical College founded in Nashville, Tennessee as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College; it is the first medical school for African Americans in the Southern United States.

Technology

 * February 14 – Scottish American inventor Alexander Graham Bell and American electrical engineer Elisha Gray each file a patent for the telephone, initiating the Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy.
 * March 7 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for the telephone.
 * March 10 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful bi-directional telephone call, saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you".
 * April – Joseph Zentmayer makes his Centennial microscope in the United States.
 * May 17 – Nicolaus Otto files his patent for the four-stroke engine using the Otto cycle.
 * August 8 – Thomas Edison is granted a United States patent for his mimeograph.
 * Emile Berliner invents an improved form of microphone (the carbon-button type) which will be adopted for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.
 * Francis Edgar Stanley of Newton, Massachusetts, patents an atomizing paint distributor, a form of airbrush.
 * The Seth Thomas Clock Company is awarded a United States patent for an adjustable wind-up alarm clock.
 * Thomas Hawksley first uses pressure grouting to control water leakage under an embankment dam at Tunstall Reservoir in Weardale, County Durham, England.
 * Melville Reuben Bissell files a United States patent for an improved carpet sweeper.

Institutions

 * October 4 – First classes begin at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.
 * Elizabeth Bragg becomes the first woman to graduate with a civil engineering degree in the United States, from University of California, Berkeley.

Awards

 * Copley Medal: Claude Bernard
 * Wollaston Medal: Thomas Henry Huxley

Births

 * January 5 – Lucien Bull (died 1972), Irish-born pioneer in chronophotography.
 * January 23 – Otto Diels (died 1954), German Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
 * February 15 – E. H. "Chinese" Wilson (died 1930), English-born plant collector.
 * April 22 – Robert Bárány (died 1936), Viennese-born Nobel Prize winner in medicine.
 * June 13 – William Sealy Gosset (died 1937), English statistician.
 * October 3 – Gabrielle Howard née Matthaei (died 1930), English-born plant physiologist.
 * November 9 – Hideyo Noguchi (died 1928), Japanese bacteriologist.
 * November 19 – Tatyana Afanasyeva (died 1964), Russian-born mathematician.
 * November 25 – Paul Nitsche (executed 1948) Nazi German psychiatrist and eugenicist.

Deaths

 * November 26 – Karl Ernst von Baer (born 1792), Baltic German naturalist.
 * Undated – Anna Volkova (born 1800), Russian chemist.