1844 in science

Astronomy

• Friedrich Bessel explains the wobbling motions of Sirius and Procyon by suggesting that these stars have dark companions.

  Biology

• July 3 – The last definitely recorded pair of great auks are killed on the Icelandic island of Eldey.
• August 1 – Opening of Berlin Zoological Garden.
• Gabriel Gustav Valentin notes the digestive activity of pancreatic juice.
• George Robert Gray begins publication in London of The Genera of Birds.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker begins publication of The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror... 1839–1843 in London.

  Chemistry

• Karl Klaus discovers ruthenium.
• Professor Gustaf Erik Pasch of Stockholm is granted the privilege of manufacturing a safety match.
• French chemist Adolphe Wurtz reports the first synthesis of copper hydride, a well-known reducing agent and catalyst in organic chemistry.

  Earth sciences

• Robert Chambers publishes Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

  Mathematics

• Joseph Liouville finds the first transcendental number
• Hermann Grassmann studies vectors with more than three dimensions.

  Medicine

• Irish physician Francis Rynd utilises a hollow hypodermic needle to make the first recorded subcutaneous injections, specifically of a sedative to treat neuralgia.

  Metrology

• Joseph Whitworth introduces the thou.

  Physics

• William Robert Grove publishes The Correlation of Physical Forces, the first comprehensive account of the conservation of energy.

  Technology

• January 30 – Charles Goodyear patents the vulcanisation of rubber in the United States.
• May 11 – Samuel Morse sends the first message using Morse code.
• June – Henry Fox Talbot commences publication of the first book illustrated with photographs from a camera, The Pencil of Nature.
• Uriah A. Boyden develops an improved outward-flow water turbine.
• Robert Bunsen invents the grease-spot photometer.
• Thomas and Caleb Pratt design the Pratt truss bridge.
• Dublin iron-founder Richard Turner begins assembling components for the Palm house at Kew Gardens in London, the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron.
• Egide Walschaerts of the Belgian State Railways originates Walschaerts valve gear for the steam locomotive.

  Events

• July 27 – Death of English chemist and physicist John Dalton in Manchester where his body lies in honour in the Town Hall and more than 40,000 people file past his coffin.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Carlo Matteucci
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Conybeare

  Births

• February 1 – G. Stanley Hall, American psychologist.
• February 7 – Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko, Russian naturalist.
• February 20 – Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist famous for the invention of statistical mechanics.
• March 25 – Adolf Engler, German botanist.
• June 10 – Carl Hagenbeck, German zoologist.
• July 1 – H. Newell Martin, British physiologist.
• August 6 – James Henry Greathead, South African-born English civil engineer.
• August 13 – Friedrich Miescher, Swiss biochemist.
• August 22 – George W. DeLong, American Arctic explorer.
• September 11 – Henry Alleyne Nicholson, English paleontologist and zoologist.
• October 3 – Patrick Manson, Scottish parasitologist, the "father of tropical medicine".
• October 28 – Mary Katharine Brandegee née Layne, American botanist.
• November 25 – Karl Benz, German automotive engineer.
• Varvara Rudneva, Russian physician.

  Deaths

• June 19 – Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, French naturalist.
• July 27 – John Dalton, English chemist and physicist.
• August 30 – Francis Baily, English astronomer.
• December 28 – Thomas Henderson, Scottish astronomer.