1837 in science

The year 1837 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.

Astronomy

• Friedrich Argelander published the first major investigation of the Sun's motion through space
• Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve publishes Stellarum Duplicium Mensurae Micrometricae

Geology

• Louis Agassiz postulates his theory of glaciation

Mathematics

• Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet proposes the modern definition of a function
• Bernard Bolzano publishes Wissenschaftslehre
• Simeon Poisson's lectures on probability and decision theory were published

Technology

• Samuel Morse exhibits his telegraph to Congress
• Thomas Davenport patents the first practical electrical motor
• William Crompton patents the silk power loom
• William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patent their electromagnetic telegraph
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship, SS Great Western, is launched

Awards

• Copley Medal: Antoine C. Becquerel; John Frederic Daniell
• Wollaston Medal: Proby Thomas Cautley; Hugh Falconer

Births

• January 16 – Ellen Russell Emerson (d. 1907), ethnologist.
• January 17 – François Lenormant (d. 1883), assyriologist and numismatist.
• January 19 – William Williams Keen (d. 1932), physician.
• March 23 – Richard Anthony Proctor (d. 1888), astronomer.
• March 7 – Henry Draper (d. 1882), doctor, astronomer.
• April 3 – John Burroughs (d. 1921), naturalist.
• May 26 – Washington Roebling (d. 1926), civil engineer.
• September 8 – Raphael Pumpelly (d. 1923), geologist.
• November 4 – James Douglas (d. 1918), metallurgist.
• November 14 – Lucas Barrett (d. 1862), naturalist.
• November 23 – Johannes Diderik van der Waals (d. 1923), physicist.
• November 28 – John Wesley Hyatt (d. 1920), inventor.

Deaths

• February 16 – Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (b. 1776), naturalist and advocate of transmutation.