1806 in science

The year 1806 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

• Publication begins in London of the Flora Graeca collected by John Sibthorp.^[1][2]
• Pierre André Latreille begins publication in France of Genera crustaceorum et insectorum, secundum ordinem naturalem ut familias disposita.

• November 20 – Humphry Davy presents the results of his researches in the electrolysis of water to the Royal Society of London.
• Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet isolate asparagine in crystalline form from asparagus juice in France, the first amino acid identified.

• August – English seal hunter Abraham Bristow discovers the Auckland Islands.^[3][4]

• Argand diagram.^[5]
• Adrien-Marie Legendre gives the first published application of the method of least squares, in a supplement to his Nouvelles méthodes pour la détermination des orbites des comètes.^[5][6]

• John Bell concludes publication of The Principles of Surgery in two volumes (1801–06). Its treatment of arterial surgery in particular ranks him as a founder of vascular surgery.^[7] His brother Charles Bell publishes Essays on The Anatomy of Expression in Painting.

• October 7 – Carbon paper patented by Ralph Wedgwood in the United Kingdom.^[8]

• Copley Medal: Thomas Andrew Knight^[9]

• January 14 – Matthew Fontaine Maury, American oceanographer (died 1873)
• February 14 – Joseph-François Malgaigne, French surgeon (died 1865)
• February 18 – Eduard Heis, German mathematician and astronomer (died 1877)
• April 9 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British civil engineer (died 1859)
• June 12 – John A. Roebling, German American bridge engineer (died 1869)
• June 27 – Augustus De Morgan, British logician (died 1871)
• November 21 – Alexander Henry Haliday, Irish entomologist (died 1870)
• December 11
  • Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich, German geologist (died 1886
    )
  • Alfred Swaine Taylor, English toxicologist, "father of British forensic medicine" (died 1880)
• Luther V. Bell, American psychiatric physician (died 1862
  )

• c. January?? – Mungo Park, Scottish explorer of West Africa (born 1771)
• April 5 – Benjamin Bell, Scottish surgeon (born 1749)
• June 23 –
  zoologist (born 1723
  )
• August 3 –
  botanist (born 1727
  )
• August 23 – Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, French physicist (born 1736)
• October 9 –
  African-American astronomer and surveyor (born 1731
  )