1876 in science

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 was 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.

  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".
• Nicolaus Otto builds the first successful four-stroke engine using the Otto cycle.
• 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.

  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, Irish-born pioneer in chronophotography.
• January 23 – Otto Diels, German Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
• February 15 – E. H. "Chinese" Wilson, English-born plant collector.
• April 22 – Robert Bárány, Viennese-born Nobel Prize winner in medicine.
• June 13 – William Sealy Gosset, English statistician.
• October 3 – Gabrielle Howard née Matthaei, English-born plant physiologist.
• November 9 – Hideyo Noguchi, Japanese bacteriologist.
• November 19 – Tatyana Afanasyeva, Russian-born mathematician.

  Deaths

• November 26 – Karl Ernst von Baer, Baltic German naturalist.
• Undated - Anna Volkova, Russian chemist.