1808 in science

List of years in science (table)
... 1798 1799 1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 ... 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 ... 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 ...
Art Archaeology Architecture Literature Music Philosophy Science +...

The year 1808 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• December 9 (20:34 UTC) – Mercury occults Saturn (not known at this time).

Chemistry

• Barium, calcium, magnesium, and strontium isolated by Sir Humphry Davy.
• Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac formulates the law of combining volumes for gases.
• John Dalton begins publication of A New System of Chemical Philosophy, explaining his atomic theory of chemistry and including a list of atomic weights.
• Jöns Jakob Berzelius publishes Lärbok i Kemien in which he proposes modern chemical symbols and notation, and of the concept of relative atomic weight.

Mathematics

• French mathematician Christian Kramp introduces the notation n! in factorials.
• German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss publishes Theorematis arithmetici demonstratio nova, introducing Gauss's lemma in the third proof of quadratic reciprocity.
• Irish American mathematician Robert Adrain produces a formulation of the method of least squares.

Medicine

• The early medical journal Bibliotek for Læger begins publication in Denmark.

Natural history

• January 12 – Organizational meeting leading to creation of the Wernerian Natural History Society is held in Edinburgh.
• Alexander von Humboldt publishes his Ansichten der Natur.

Technology

• February 11 – Anthracite coal is first burned as fuel by Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; the discovery leads to the use of coal as a key fuel source of the industrial revolution in the United States.

Awards

• Copley Medal: William Henry
• Joseph Louis Lagrange is appointed by Napoleon as a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour and a Comte of the French Empire.

Births

• July 8 – George Robert Gray, English zoologist (died 1872).
• July 25 – Johann Benedict Listing, German mathematician (died 1882).
• August 4 – Johann Ritter von Oppolzer, Austrian physician (died 1871).
• November 6 – Friedrich Julius Richelot, German mathematician (died 1875).
• Anne Elizabeth Ball, Irish phycologist (died 1872).
• Caterina Scarpellini, Italian astronomer (died 1873).

Deaths

• March 3 – Johan Christian Fabricius, Danish entomologist (born 1745).
• May 18 – Rev. Elijah Craig, American inventor of bourbon whiskey (birth date uncertain).
• December 24 – Thomas Beddoes, reforming English physician (born 1760).