1848 in science

Events

• September 20 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science is set up in Pennsylvania by re-formation of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, with William Charles Redfield as its first president.

  Astronomy

• September 16 – William Cranch Bond and William Lassell discover Hyperion, Saturn's moon.
• Lord Rosse studies M1 and names it the Crab Nebula.
• Édouard Roche calculates the Roche limit.
• Rudolf Wolf devises a way of quantifying sunspot activity, the Wolf number.

  Botany

• April 16 – Joseph Dalton Hooker arrives at Darjeeling to begin the first European plant collecting expedition in the Himalayas.

  Chemistry

• Edward Frankland, working in Germany, discovers the organometallic compound diethylzinc.

  Exploration

• Admiral Nevelskoi demonstrates that the Strait of Tartary is a strait.

  Medicine

• September 13 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head, providing a demonstration of the effects of damage to the brain's frontal lobe.
• November 1 – The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School, opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Alfred Baring Garrod recognises that excess uric acid in the blood is the cause of gout.
• Rudolf Virchow produces a advocating broad social as well as public health measures to counter such outbreaks.

  Physics

• Lord Kelvin establishes concept of absolute zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases.
• Nicholas Callan of Maynooth College invents an improved form of battery.
• Hippolyte Fizeau and John Scott Russell present studies of the Doppler effect in electromagnetic and sound waves respectively.

  Technology

• August 15 – James Warren submits a U.K. patent application for the Warren truss.
• James Bogardus erects the first free-standing cast-iron architectural façade, the Milhau Pharmacy Building in New York City.
• Completion of palm houses at Kew Gardens, London, and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, by Richard Turner of Dublin.
• Joseph-Louis Lambot constructs the first ferrocement boat, in France.
• Linus Yale Sr., invents the modern pin tumbler lock.
• John Stringfellow flies a steam-powered monoplane model for a short distance in a powered glide in England.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: John Couch Adams
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Buckland

  Births

• March 8 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson, American inventor.
• April 9 – Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, British-born electrical engineer and inventor
• May 23 – Otto Lilienthal, German aviation pioneer.
• June 12 – Albertina Carlsson Swedish zoologist.
• June 22 – William Macewen, Scottish surgeon.
• July 7 – Cuthbert Hilton Golding-Bird, English surgeon.
• August 14 – Margaret Lindsay, Irish astronomer.
• November 8 – Gottlob Frege, German mathematician.
• November 27 – Henry A. Rowland, American physicist.

  Deaths

• January 9 – Caroline Herschel, German astronomer.
• January 12 – Christophe-Paulin de La Poix de Fréminville, French explorer and naturalist.
• January 24 – Horace Wells, American dentist, pioneer of the use of anesthesia, suicide.
• August 7 – Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist.
• August 12 – George Stephenson, English locomotive engineer.
• December 18 – Bernard Bolzano, Bohemian mathematician.