1892 in science

Astronomy

• September 9 – At Lick Observatory, Edward Emerson Barnard discovers Amalthea, the third moon of Jupiter and the last natural satellite found by direct visual observation.

  Biology

• Viruses are first described by Russian–Ukrainian biologist Dmitri Ivanovsky.

  Chemistry

• approx. date – James Dewar invents the Dewar flask.

  Environment

• May 28 – Scottish American naturalist John Muir founds the environmental organization the Sierra Club in San Francisco, aided by a group of professors from the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.
• American environmental chemist Ellen Swallow Richards, in a lecture in Boston, calls for the "christening of a new science" – oekology, to embrace environmental education and consumer nutrition.

  Geography

• November – Traveller Isabella Bird becomes the first woman inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in Britain.

  Mathematics

• Georg Cantor shows there are different kinds of infinity and studies transfinite numbers.
• Gino Fano discovers the Fano plane.

  Medicine

• July 18 – Russian-born bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine demonstrates the first anti-cholera vaccine.
• German pathologist Curt Schimmelbusch proposes that medical dressings should be sterilized daily prior to surgery and designs a form of autoclave to facilitate this.
• Czech neurologist Arnold Pick identifies the clinical syndrome of Pick's disease and the Pick bodies that characterise the frontotemporal lobe disorder.
• Johann von Mikulicz-Radecki first describes Sjögren’s syndrome.
• First edition of William Osler's textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine, designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine is published in Edinburgh while the author is Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. It remains internationally significant in medical education for forty years.

  Psychology

• July – The American Psychological Association is founded.

  Technology

• February 23 – Rudolf Diesel obtains a patent for a compression-ignition engine.
• François Hennebique patents his system of reinforced concrete.

  Publications

• Brothers Richard and Cherry Kearton publish With Nature and a Camera in the United Kingdom, the first nature book illustrated entirely from photographs.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Rudolf Virchow
• Wollaston Medal for geology: Ferdinand von Richthofen

  Births

• January 1 – Guido Fanconi, Swiss pediatrician.
• March 30 – Stefan Banach, Polish mathematician.
• April 14 – Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth, German astronomer.
• May 3 – George Paget Thomson, English atomic physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• July 24 – Alice Ball, African American chemist.
• August 15 – Louis-Victor de Broglie, French recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• August 26
• * Elizebeth Smith Friedman, American cryptanalyst.
• * Emanuel Miller, British child psychiatrist.
• September 6 – Edward Victor Appleton, English radiophysicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• October 26 – André Chapelon, French steam locomotive designer.
• November 5 – J. B. S. Haldane, British geneticist.
• November 21 – Margery C. Carlson, American botanist.
• December 12 – Herman Potočnik , Slovene pioneer of astronautics and cosmonautics.

  Deaths

• January 2 – George Biddell Airy, English astronomer royal.
• January 21 – John Couch Adams, English mathematician.
• March 29 – Sir William Bowman, 1st Baronet, English ophthalmologist, histologist and anatomist.
• April 2 – Emin Pasha, Silesian Jewish Ottoman explorer.
• May 5 – August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist
• June 27 – Carl Schorlemmer, German organic chemist.
• December 6 – Werner von Siemens, German electrical engineer.
• December 18 – Richard Owen, English anatomist and paleontologist.