1879 in science

Astronomy

• British children's writer and amateur astronomer Agnes Giberne publishes the popular illustrated book Sun, Moon and Stars: Astronomy for Beginners which sells 24,000 copies on both sides of the Atlantic in twenty years.

  Biology

• April 26 – The National Park, later renamed the Royal National Park, is declared in New South Wales, Australia, the world's second oldest purposed national park, and the first to use the term "national park".
• Jean Henri Fabre publishes the first of his Souvenirs entomologiques.
• Heinrich Anton de Bary coins the term symbiosis in his monograph Die Erscheinung der Symbiose.

  Cartography

• Peirce quincuncial projection developed by Charles Sanders Peirce.

  Chemistry

• January 2 – Publication of first issue of Journal of the American Chemical Society.
• Per Teodor Cleve discovers the elements holmium and thulium.
• Lars Fredrik Nilson discovers the element scandium.

  Earth sciences

• Vasily Dokuchaev introduces the concept of pedology, laying the foundations for the modern study of soil science.
• Ferdinand André Fouqué publishes Santorin et ses éruptions, a significant text in volcanology.

  History of science

• Carl Schorlemmer publishes .

  Mathematics

• Charles L. Dodgson publishes Euclid and his Modern Rivals in London.
• Gottlob Frege publishes Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens in Halle, a significant text in the development of mathematical logic.
• Felix Klein first describes the Grünbaum–Rigby configuration.

  Medicine

• British psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne publishes "On the weight of the brain and its component parts in the insane", a key paper in the neuropathology of insanity.
• Viennese physician Felix von Winiwarter provides an early description of Thromboangiitis obliterans.

  Meteorology

• George Stokes perfects the Campbell–Stokes recorder.

  Paleontology

• Camptosaurus prestwichii found at Cumnor, near Oxford.

  Pharmacology

• Vassili von Anrep of the University of Würzburg demonstrate the analgesic properties of cocaine.

  Physics

• Edwin Hall discovers the Hall Effect.
• Joseph Stefan originates the Stefan–Boltzmann law, stating that the total radiation from a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its thermodynamic temperature.

  Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt creates the first laboratory of experimental psychology, at the University of Leipzig.

  Technology

• May 31 – Werner von Siemens demonstrates the first electric locomotive using an external power source at Berlin.
• June 6 – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first ocean-going ship to be built of mild steel, the SS Rotomahana, on the River Clyde in Scotland.
• October 22 – Thomas Edison successfully tests a carbon filament thread in an incandescent light bulb.
• A heavy oil engine is built by Jacob Morrison of Norton, County Durham, England.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Rudolf Clausius
• Wollaston Medal: Bernhard Studer

  Births

• January 1 – Ernest Jones, Welsh psychoanalyst.
• February 1 – Henri Chrétien, French astronomer and optical inventor.
• February 22 – J. N. Brønsted, Danish physical chemist.
• March 8 – Otto Hahn, German physicist and winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• March 14 – Albert Einstein, German-born physicist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
• May 28 – Milutin Milanković, Serbian geophysicist.
• June 3 – Raymond Pearl, American biologist.
• August 29 – May Smith, English experimental psychologist.
• October 9 – Max von Laue, German physicist and winner of the 1914 Nobel Prize in Physics.

  Deaths

• January 24 – Heinrich Geißler, German scientific instrument maker.
• March 3 – William Kingdon Clifford, English geometer.
• April 4 – Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, Prussian physicist and climatologist.
• April 16 – Peter Kosler, Carniolan geographer and cartographer.
• April 23 - Elisabetta Fiorini Mazzanti, Italian botanist.
• May 4 – William Froude, English hydrodynamicist.
• November 5 – James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish-born mathematician and physicist.