1799 - Science

Science

Engineer William Smith dictates a table of strata in the vicinity to an amateur geologist at Bath (see 1793). The table will become widely known among geologists, as will Smith's revolutionary discoveries (see Brongniart, 1811).

A letter announcing "the discovery at Rosetta of some inscriptions that may offer much interest" arrives at the Institute of Egypt, founded by General Bonaparte at Paris to gather knowledge about the country he is conquering and colonizing. An Army Corps of Engineers captain named Boucard has found a large block of basalt whose polished surface has been chiseled with Greek characters, with hieroglyphs, and with characters that will later be called demotic (see decree of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, 196 B.C.). Boucard suspects that all three inscriptions may say the same thing and that this Rosetta stone may be the key to an understanding of the Egyptian language of antiquity and its hieroglyphic writings (see Champollion, 1821).

Baron Cuvier in France introduces the term phylum to denote a category more general than classes (see 1798; Linnaeus, 1737); he takes the word from the Greek for "tribe."

Prussian naturalist Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt, 30, sails from Coruma, Spain, for Spanish America aboard the Pizarro. Accompanying him is French botanist Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (originally Goujuad), 26, who will travel with von Humboldt in Cuba, Mexico, and the Andes, will be a professor of natural sciences at Buenos Aires from 1818 to 1821, and will be imprisoned by the dictator of Paraguay from 1821 to 1830 (see Humboldt, 1800).

Mathematician Maria Agnesi dies at Milan January 4 at age 81. She turned her home into a hospital and has spent the last 15 years of her life administering the Po Alberto Trivulzio Public Institution for Care of the Elderly and Homeless; physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani dies at Pavia February 11 at age 70; physician-plant physiologist Jan Ingenhousz near Bowood Park outside Calne, Wiltshire, September 7 at age 68; chemist Joseph Black at Edinburgh December 6 at age 71.

France's National Convention fixes values of meters and kilograms in the law of the 10th of December, making use of the metric system compulsory (see 1791). Most of the world will follow the French example, but Britain and the United States will cling to inches, feet, miles, and pounds, resisting metrics for more than 2 centuries (see 1851).