1867 in science

Events

• April – First clear recorded use of the word science in English with today's usage as restricted to the natural and physical sciences.

  Botany

• Gorse naturalises in New Zealand and soon becomes the worst invasive weed.
• Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener proposes his dual theory of lichens.
• Rosa 'La France', the first hybrid tea rose, is cultivated by Jean-Baptiste Guillot.
• The Big Trees Ranch at Felton, California, is bought by San Francisco businessman Joseph Warren Welch to preserve the giant redwoods from logging.

  Chemistry

• Alfred Nobel patents dynamite.
• Henry Enfield Roscoe isolates vanadium.
• Charles-Adolphe Wurtz synthesizes neurine.

  Economics

• Publication of the first volume of Das Kapital by Karl Marx.

Geology

• At Fountain Point, Michigan, an artesian water spring begins to gush continuously.
• Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel established in the United States under the directorship of Clarence King.

  History of science

• Assyriologist George Smith discovers an inscription recording a solar eclipse in the month of Sivan on British Museum Tablet K51, which he is able to link to 15 June 763 BC, the cornerstone of ancient Near Eastern chronology.

  Mathematics

• English mathematician Rev. William Allen Whitworth publishes the first edition of his Choice and Chance: An Elementary Treatise on Permutations, Combinations, and Probability.

  Physiology and medicine

• March 16 – First publication of an article by Joseph Lister outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery, in The Lancet.
• July 17 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established as the first dental school in the United States.
• Henry Maudsley publishes The Physiology and Pathology of Mind.
• Viennese psychiatrist Theodor Meynert observes variations in the cytoarchitecture of the brain.
• Yellow fever kills 3093 in New Orleans.

  Technology

• January 1 – The Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge opens between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky, its 1,057-foot main span making it the longest single-span bridge in the world by a margin of 14 m at this time. It will be renamed after its designer, John A. Roebling, in 1983.
• February 17 – The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.
• July 2 – First elevated railroad in the United States begins service in New York.
• December 14 – Spanish inventor Narcís Monturiol submerges his submarine Ictineo II at Barcelona, demonstrating its chemically-fired anaerobic steam propulsion system.
• Pierre Michaux invents the front wheel-driven velocipede, the first mass-produced bicycle.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Karl Ernst von Baer
• Wollaston Medal: George Poulett Scrope

  Births

• January 11 – Edward B. Titchener, English-born structuralist psychologist.
• January 22 – Gisela Januszewska, Moravian-born public health physician.
• April 16 – Wilbur Wright, American pioneer aviator.
• June 11 – Charles Fabry, French optical physicist.
• July 8 – Edgar Buckingham, American physicist.
• October 21 – Aldred Scott Warthin, American cancer geneticist.
• November 7 – Maria Skłodowska, later Marie Curie, Polish-born physicist.
• November 26 – Emil von Dungern, German serologist.
• December 1 – Ignacy Mościcki, chemist and President of Poland.
• December 26 – John Bradfield, Australian civil engineer.

  Deaths

• January 16 – William Marsden, English surgeon.
• February 9 – Filippo de Filippi, Italian zoologist.
• March 27 – Prideaux John Selby, English ornithologist.
• May 29 - Margaretta Morris, American entomologist.
• August 25 – Michael Faraday, English chemist and physicist.