1833 in science

Astronomy

• November 12–13 – A spectacular occurrence of the Leonid meteor shower is observed over Alabama.

  Biology

• May 3 – The Entomological Society of London is inaugurated.
• Katherine Sophia Kane's The Irish Flora is published anonymously.

  Chemistry

• Thomas Graham proposes Graham's Law.

  Computer science

• June 5 – Ada Lovelace is introduced to Charles Babbage by Mary Somerville.

  Geophysics

• November 25 – A major 8.7 earthquake strikes Sumatra.

  Mathematics

• probable date – Paul Gerwien proves the Bolyai–Gerwien theorem formulated by Farkas Bolyai: that any two simple polygons of equal area are equidecomposable.

  Paleontology

• Henry Witham publishes The Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables found in the Carboniferous and Oolitic deposits of Great Britain in Edinburgh.

  Physics

• Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Eduard Weber develop an electromagnetic telegraph at Göttingen.

  Physiology and medicine

• William Beaumont publishes Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion.
• Charles Bell publishes The Hand: its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design, the fourth Bridgewater Treatise.
• Marshall Hall coins the term "reflex" for a muscular reaction.
• Jean Lobstein proposes use of the term arteriosclerosis.
• Johannes Peter Müller begins publication of his major physiology textbook Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen.
• Anselme Payen discovers diastase.

  Technology

• August 18 – The Canadian ship SS Royal William sets out from Pictou, Nova Scotia on a 25-day passage of the Atlantic Ocean largely under steam to Gravesend, Kent, England.
• Obed Hussey patents a reaper in the United States.
• Cornish engineer Adrian Stephens invents the steam whistle as a warning device at Dowlais Ironworks in Wales.
• Publication by Charles Knight of The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge begins in London.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Not awarded

  Births

• January 19 – Alfred Clebsch, German mathematician.
• February 26 – Georges Pouchet, French comparative anatomist.
• March 14 – Lucy Hobbs Taylor, American dentist.
• March 23 – Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal, German psychiatrist.
• March 25 – Fleeming Jenkin, English electrical engineer.
• May 5 – Ferdinand von Richthofen, German geographer.
• June 29 – Peter Waage, Norwegian chemist.
• October 9 – Eugen Langen, German mechanical engineer.
• October 17 – Paul Bert, French physiologist.
• October 21 – Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor.
• December 2 – Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen, German pathologist.

  Deaths

• January 10 – Adrien-Marie Legendre, mathematician.
• February 6
• * Fausto Elhuyar, chemist
• * Pierre André Latreille, zoologist.
• February 14 – Gottlieb Kirchhoff, chemist.
• April 22 – Richard Trevithick, engineer and inventor.
• May 15 – Bewick Bridge, mathematician.
• July 5 – Nicéphore Niépce, inventor.
• October 31 – Johann Friedrich Meckel, anatomist.