1886 in science

Astronomy

• Dorothea Klumpke takes up a post at the Paris Observatory, becoming Director of the Bureau of Measurements.

  Chemistry

• February 6 – German chemist Clemens Winkler discovers chemical element Germanium.
• June 26 – Henri Moissan reports the successful isolation of elemental fluorine by electrolysis of a solution of potassium hydrogen difluoride in liquid hydrogen fluoride.

  Exploration

• December 17 – English adventurer Thomas Stevens concludes the first circumnavigation by bicycle in Yokohama, having set out on his penny-farthing from San Francisco in 1884.

  History of science

• Dugald Clerk publishes The Gas and Oil Engine in London.

  Mathematics

• English mathematician Rev. William Allen Whitworth is the first to use ordered Bell numbers to count the number of weak orderings of a set.

  Medicine

• March 11 – The first Indian woman doctor qualifies in Western medicine, Anandi Gopal Joshi at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania She is followed by Kadambini Ganguly at the Calcutta Medical College.
• George Assaky describes a method for operating on separated nerve sutures.
• The classic descriptions of Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease are published by Jean-Martin Charcot and his pupil Pierre Marie in Paris and by Howard H. Tooth in London.
• Dr Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie is published in Stuttgart.
• Heinrich Schule describes dementia praecox.
• Dr Thomas Allinson's popular book A System of Hygienic Medicine is published in England, promoting health through natural diet and exercise rather than orthodox medicine.
• Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women is founded by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake.

  Metallurgy

• July 9 – Charles Hall files a United States patent for the Hall–Héroult process for converting alumina into aluminum by electrolysis.

  Physics

• November 11 – Heinrich Hertz verifies at the University of Karlsruhe the existence of electromagnetic waves.

  Technology

• July 3 – Ottmar Mergenthaler's Linotype machine is introduced at the New-York Tribune.
• August 13 – Romanian inventor Alexandru Ciurcu and French journalist :fr:Just Buisson|Just Buisson demonstrate a reaction engine, used to power a boat. On December 16 a second engine explodes, killing Buisson.
• September 21 – William Stanley, Jr. patents the induction coil in the United States, the first practical alternating current transformer device.
• October 31 – Opening of Dom Luís Bridge, Porto, a two-hinged double-deck arch bridge across the Douro River in Portugal designed by Téophile Seyrig. Its main span of will remain the world's longest in iron.
• December 28 – Josephine Cochrane patents the first commercially successful automatic dishwasher in the United States.
• Gottlieb Daimler produces the first motorboat, Neckar, in Germany.
• Auguste Mustel invents the celesta.
• Herbert Akroyd Stuart produces his first prototype heavy oil engines, in England.
• Schuyler Wheeler produces the first electric fan, in the United States.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Franz Neumann
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Alfred Des Cloizeaux

  Births

• January 28 – Hidetsugu Yagi, Japanese electrical engineer
• March 7 – G. I. Taylor, English physicist
• March 8 – Edward Calvin Kendall, American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• April 5 – Frederick Lindemann, German-born British physicist
• May 22 – Hermann Stieve, German anatomist and histologist
• June 7 – Henri Coandă, Romanian aeronautical engineer
• June 18 – Tsuruko Haraguchi, born Tsuru Arai, Japanese psychologist
• July 6 – Ronald Hatton, English pomologist
• July 30 – Muthulakshmi Reddi, Indian physician and social reformer
• September 26 – Archibald Hill, English physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• November 20 – Karl von Frisch, Austrian ethologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• December 9 – Clarence Birdseye, American founder of the modern frozen food industry

  Deaths

• February 25 – Lady Katherine Sophia Kane, Irish botanist
• March 15 – Anastasie Fătu, Moldavian and Romanian physician and naturalist
• July 1 – Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich, German mineralogist and geologist
• August 17 – Aleksandr Butlerov, Russian chemist
• November 14 – Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois, French mineralogist and geologist.
• November 25 – Richard Maack, Russian naturalist, geographer, and anthropologist
• September 18 – Sampson Gamgee, English surgeon.
• December 26 – Theodor von Oppolzer, Austrian astronomer