The year 1803 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Astronomy
- April 26 – A meteorite shower falls on L'Aigle in Normandy; Jean Baptiste Biot demonstrates that it is of extraterrestrial origin.123
Botany
- Publication (posthumously) of André Michaux's Flora Boreali-Americana in Paris, the first flora of North America.
- University of Tartu Botanical Gardens established.
Chemistry
- January 1 – William Henry's formulation of his law on the solubility of gases first published.4
- September 3 – English scientist John Dalton starts using symbols to represent the atoms of different chemical elements.
- October 21 – John Dalton's atomic theory and list of molecular weights first made known, at a lecture in Manchester.56
- William Hyde Wollaston discovers the chemical element rhodium.
- Smithson Tennant discovers the chemical elements iridium and osmium.
- Cerium is discovered in Bastnäs (Sweden) by Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Wilhelm Hisinger, and independently in Germany by Martin Heinrich Klaproth.7
- Claude Louis Berthollet publishes Essai de statique chimique in Paris.
Exploration
- June 9 – Matthew Flinders completes the first known circumnavigation of Australia.8
Mathematics
- Gian Francesco Malfatti presents his conjecture regarding Malfatti circles.91011
Medicine
- Jean Marc Gaspard Itard first recognises pneumothorax.
- Dr Thomas Percival of Manchester publishes his Medical Ethics; or, a Code of Institutes and Precepts, Adapted to the Professional Conduct of Physicians and Surgeons, coining the expression medical ethics.12
Meteorology
- Luke Howard publishes the basis of the modern classification and nomenclature of clouds.1314
Technology
- Robert Ransome invents the self-sharpening chilled cast-iron ploughshare in Ipswich, England.
- The first Fourdrinier continuous papermaking machine is installed in Hertfordshire, England.
Transport
- January 4 – William Symington demonstrates his Charlotte Dundas, the "first practical steamboat", in Scotland.
- July 26 – The Surrey Iron Railway, a wagonway between Wandsworth and Croydon, is opened, being the first public railway line in England.
- Thomas Telford begins work on construction of the Caledonian Canal and improving roads in Scotland.1516
Awards
Births
- February 26 – Arnold Adolph Berthold, German physiologist (died 1861)
- February 28 – Christian Heinrich von Nagel, German geometer (died 1882)
- April 1 – Miles Joseph Berkeley, English cryptogamist (died 1889)
- May 12 – Justus von Liebig, German chemist (died 1873)
- May 24 – Charles Lucien Bonaparte, French naturalist (died 1857)
- June 8 – Amalia Assur, Swedish dentist (died 1889)
- July 31 – John Ericsson, Swedish-born mechanical engineer and inventor (died 1889)
- October 3 – John Gorrie, American physician and inventor (died 1855)
- October 6 – Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, Prussian physicist and climatologist (died 1879)
- October 16 – Robert Stephenson, English railway engineer (died 1859)
- November 29 – Christian Doppler, Austrian mathematician and discoverer of the Doppler effect (died 1853)
- December 21 – Joseph Whitworth, English mechanical engineer (died 1887)
- Choe Han-gi, Korean philosopher of science (died 1877)
Deaths
- May 8 – John Joseph Merlin, Liège-born English inventor (born 1735)
- October 14 – Ami Argand, Genevan physicist and chemist (born 1750)
References
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Henry, William (January 1, 1803). "Experiments on the Quantity of Gases Absorbed by Water, at Different Temperatures, and under Different Pressures". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 93. London: 29–274. doi:10.1098/rstl.1803.0004. /wiki/File:William_Henry-Experiments_on_the_Quantity_of_Gases_Absorbed_by_Water.pdf ↩
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Howard, Luke (1803). "On the modifications of clouds, and on the principles of their production, suspension and destruction". Philosophical Magazine. 16 (62): 97–107, 344–57. doi:10.1080/14786440308676310. https://zenodo.org/record/1430688 ↩
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