1802 in science

Astronomy

• March 28 – H. W. Olbers discovers the asteroid Pallas, the second known.
• May 6 – William Herschel coins the term asteroid and on July 1 first uses the term binary star to refer to a star which revolves around another.

  Biology

• Pierre André Latreille begins publication of his Histoire naturelle générale et particulière des crustacés et insectes.
• George Montagu publishes his Ornithological Dictionary; or Alphabetical Synopsis of British Birds.
• In the history of evolutionary thought
• * Jean-Baptiste Lamarck publishes Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivants, proposing that all life is organized in a vertical chain of progressive complexity.
• * Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus begins publication of Biologie; oder die Philosophie der lebenden Natur, proposing a theory of the transmutation of species.

  Chemistry

• June – The first account of Thomas Wedgwood's experiments in photography using silver nitrate is published by Humphry Davy in the Journal of the Royal Institution in London. Since a fixative for the image has not yet been devised, the early photographs quickly fade.
• July – William Hyde Wollaston notes the discovery of the noble metal palladium.
• Charles's law, describing how gases tend to expand when heated, is first published in France by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac.

  Ecology

• Civil engineer and geographer François Antoine Rauch publishes Harmonie hydro-végétale et météorologique: ou recherches sur les moyens de recréer avec nos forêts la force des températures et la régularité des saisons par des plantations raisonnées in Paris, arguing against deforestation.

  Geology

• James Smithson proves that zinc carbonates are true carbonate minerals and not zinc oxides, as was previously thought.
• John Playfair publishes Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth in Edinburgh, popularising James Hutton's theory of geology.
• James Sowerby begins to issue his British Mineralogy, or, coloured figures intended to elucidate the mineralogy of Great Britain in London, the first comprehensive illustrated reference work on the subject.

  Medicine

• June – The first pediatric hospital, the Hôpital des Enfants Malades, opens in Paris, on the site of a previous orphanage.
• London Fever Hospital founded.
• Charles Bell publishes The Anatomy of the Brain, Explained in a Series of Engravings.

  Meteorology

• December – Luke Howard presents the basis of the modern classification and nomenclature of clouds, at a lecture in London.

  Physics

• Johann Wilhelm Ritter builds the first electrochemical cell.

  Surveying

• April 10 – Great Trigonometric Survey of India begins with the measurement of a baseline near Madras.

  Technology

• November 5 – Marc Isambard Brunel begins installation of his blockmaking machinery at Portsmouth Block Mills in England.
• George Bodley of Exeter in England patents the first enclosed kitchen stove.

  Publications

• January 2 – Rev. Abraham Rees begins publication in London of The New Cyclopædia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: William Hyde Wollaston

  Births

• February 6 – Charles Wheatstone, English inventor
• April 4 – Dorothea Dix, American mental health reformer
• July 9 – Thomas Davenport, American inventor
• August 5 – Niels Henrik Abel, Norwegian mathematician
• October 10 – Hugh Miller, Scottish geologist
• December 15 – János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician

  Deaths

• April 14 – John Mackay, Scottish botanist
• April 18 – Erasmus Darwin, English author of Zoonomia
• November 16 – André Michaux, French botanist