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The year 1831 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• January 7 – Great Comet of 1831 (C/1831 A1, 1830 II) first observed by John Herapath.
• March 7 – Royal Astronomical Society receives its Royal Charter.
• Heinrich Schwabe makes the first detailed drawing of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.
• Mary Somerville translates Laplace's Mécanique céleste as The Mechanism of the Heavens.

Biology

• September 1 – Zoological Gardens, Dublin, open in Ireland.
• Robert Brown names the cell nucleus, in a paper to the Linnean Society of London.

Chemistry

• A. A. Bussy publishes his Mémoire sur le Radical métallique de la Magnésie describing his method of isolating magnesium.
• The Kaliapparat, a laboratory device for the analysis of carbon in organic compounds, is invented by Justus von Liebig.

Exploration

• June 1 – British Royal Navy officer James Clark Ross locates the position of the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula.
• December 27 – Charles Darwin starts his voyage on HMS Beagle from Plymouth.

Medicine

• May 16 – Middlesex County Asylum for pauper lunatics opens at Hanwell near London under the humane superintendence of William Charles Ellis.
• Dr C. Turner Thackrah publishes The Effects of the Principal Arts, Trades, and Professions, and of Civic States and Habits of Living, on Health and Longevity, with a particular reference to the trades and manufactures of Leeds, and suggestions for the removal of many of the agents which produce disease and shorten the duration of life, a pioneering study of occupational and public health in a newly industrialised English city.

Paleontology

• Henry Witham publishes Observations on fossil vegetables, accompanied by representations of their internal structure, as seen through the microscope in Edinburgh.

Technology

• April 12 – Broughton Suspension Bridge over the River Irwell in England collapses under marching troops.
• August 29 – Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic induction at the Royal Society of London. Joseph Henry recognises it at about the same time.
• October 28 – Faraday develops the Faraday Wheel, a homopolar generator.
• Joseph Henry invents the electric bell.
• James Meadows Rendel erects the first bascule bridge with a hydraulic mechanism, on the Kingsbridge Estuary in England.
• William Wallace invents the eidograph.

Institutions

• September 27 – British Association for the Advancement of Science first meets, in York.

Awards

• Copley Medal: George Biddell Airy
• Wollaston Medal (first award): William Smith

Births

• January 20 – Edward Routh (died 1907), Canadian-born English mathematician.
• January 26 – Heinrich Anton de Bary (died 1888), German surgeon, botanist, microbiologist and mycologist.
• February 28 – Edward James Stone (died 1897), English astronomer.
• March 3 – George Pullman (died 1897), American inventor.
• May 16 – David E. Hughes (died 1900), British inventor.
• June 13 – James Clerk Maxwell (died 1879), Scottish-born mathematician.
• August 20 – Eduard Suess (died 1914), Austrian geologist.
• October 6 – Richard Dedekind (died 1916), German mathematician.
• October 15 – Isabella Bird (died 1904), English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist.
• October 21 – Hermann Hellriegel (died 1895), German agricultural chemist, discoverer of the mechanism by which leguminous plants assimilate the free nitrogen of the atmosphere.
• October 29 – Othniel Charles Marsh (died 1899), American paleontologist.

Deaths

• February 14 – Henry Maudslay (born 1771), English mechanical engineer.
• March 26 - Pierre Amable Jean-Baptiste Trannoy (born 1772), French physician, hygienist and botanist.
• June 27 – Sophie Germain (born 1776), French mathematician.
• October 14 – Jean-Louis Pons (born 1761, French astronomer.
• December 22 – François Huber (born 1750), blind Swiss naturalist.

References

1. Herapath, John (1831). "SAO/NASA ADS Astronomy Abstract Service". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 2: 6. Bibcode:1831MNRAS...2....6H. Retrieved 2011-02-06.
2. "A brief history of the RAS". Royal Astronomical Society. Archived from the original on 30 January 2011. Retrieved 2011-02-06.
3. "History Of Dublin Zoo". Family Fun. Retrieved 2011-12-20.
4. Hunt, Tristram (2004). Building Jerusalem: the rise and fall of the Victorian city. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-60767-7.
5. Bishop, R.E.D. (1979). Vibration (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22779-8.
6. "Icons, a portrait of England 1820-1840". Archived from the original on 22 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
7. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
8. Scientific writings of Joseph Henry. Vol. 30. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 1886. p. 434.
9. Clarke, Mike (2009-01-05). "A Brief History of Movable Bridges". Retrieved 2012-02-09.
10. Waterston, Charles D.; Shearer, A. Macmillan (July 2006). Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783-2002: Biographical Index (PDF). Vol. 2. Royal Society of Edinburgh. p. 964. ISBN 978-0-902198-84-5. Retrieved 2012-01-23.
11. Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 257–258. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
12. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
13. "Date of death on the decennial table, page 191". archives.somme.fr (in French). Retrieved 5 March 2021.

• 1831 in science
• 19th century in science
• 1830s in science