The year 1872 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Chemistry Robert Chesebrough patents Vaseline in the United StatesU.S. Patent 127,568. Eugen Baumann rediscovers polyvinyl chloride Charles-Adolphe Wurtz discovers the aldol reaction
Conservation March 1 – Yellowstone National Park is established in the United States, the world's first national parkU.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 17, Chap. 24, pp. 32-33. "An Act to set apart a certain Tract of Land lying near the Head-waters of the Yellowstone River as a public Park." From The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 collection, Library of Congress.
Exploration May 13–September 26 – Benjamin Leigh Smith's 1872 expedition to Jan Mayen and Svalbard December 21 – Challenger expedition: sails from Portsmouth in England on the 4-year scientific expedition that lays the foundation for the science of oceanography
Mathematics Richard Dedekind publishes Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen, a theory of irrational numbers Felix Klein produces the Erlangen program on geometries
Medicine February 15 – George Huntington makes the first detailed description of Huntington's disease, in Middleport, Ohio Moritz Kaposi describes Kaposi's sarcoma Translated as: and the manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus Ferdinand Monoyer proposes the dioptre as a unit for measuring the optical power of a lens
Physics Ludwig Boltzmann states the Boltzmann equation for the temporal development of distribution functions in phase space, and publishes his H-theorem
Technology April 1 – English hangman William Marwood first uses his technique of the long drop (on uxoricide William Frederick Horry at Lincoln Castle) April 2 – George Brayton obtains a United States patent for a constant pressure internal combustion engine, initially using vaporized gas, and marketed as 'Brayton's Ready Motor'Improvement in Gas-Engines (Patent no. 125166). John Hopkinson proposes the group flash system for distinguishing lighthouses Reverend C. M. Ramus of Sussex, England, devises the single-step hydroplane hull
Institutions October 1 – the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session The Polytechnic Museum in Moscow is founded
Publications May – the magazine Popular Science is first published in the United States Charles Darwin publishes The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Awards Copley Medal: Friedrich Woehler Wollaston Medal for geology: James Dwight Dana
Births April 5 – Samuel Cate Prescott (died 1962), American food scientist and microbiologist April 21 - Charles Gandy (died 1943), French physician. May 6 – Willem de Sitter (died 1934), Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer May 21 – Henry E. Warren (died 1957), American inventor May 31 – Charles Greeley Abbot (died 1973), American astrophysicist August 1 – Solomon Carter Fuller (died 1953), Liberian-born psychiatrist September 23 – Marie Depage (died in sinking of the RMS Lusitania 1915), Belgian nurse October 4 – Ernest Fourneau (died 1949), French medicinal chemist
Deaths March 8 – Priscilla Susan Bury (born 1799), English botanist April 2 – Samuel Morse (born 1791), American inventor May 6 – George Robert Gray (born 1808), English zoologist August 11 – Sir Andrew Smith (born 1797), Scottish-born military surgeon, explorer, ethnologist and zoologist August 22 – Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (born 1787), French physician November 7 – Alfred Clebsch (born 1833), German mathematician December 6 – Félix Archimède Pouchet (born 1800), French scientist December 24 – William John Macquorn Rankine (born 1820), Scottish physicist Anne Elizabeth Ball (born 1808), Irish psychologist
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