The year 1876 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• December 7 – First recorded observation of the Great White Spot on Saturn, made by American astronomer Asaph Hall, who uses it to calculate the planet's rotation period.

Biology

• Robert Koch demonstrates that Bacillus anthracis is the source of anthrax, the first bacterium conclusively shown to cause disease.^[1]
• Koller's sickle in avian gastrulation is first described by August Rauber.
• Francis Galton invents the silent dog whistle.^[2]
• Meiosis is discovered and described for the first time in sea urchin eggs by the German biologist Oscar Hertwig.

Chemistry

• Josiah Willard Gibbs publishes On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, a compilation of his work on thermodynamics and physical chemistry which lays out the concept of free energy to explain the physical basis of chemical equilibria.^[3]

Exploration

• May 24 – End of the Challenger expedition.^[4]

Mathematics

• Édouard Lucas demonstrates that 127 is a Mersenne prime, the largest that will be recorded for seventy-five years.^[5] He also shows that the Mersenne number 2⁶⁷ − 1, or M₆₇, must have factors.

Medicine

• February 22 – Swedish woman Karolina Olsson lapses into a form of hibernation for 32 years.
• David Ferrier publishes The Functions of the Brain.
• William Macewen demonstrates clinical diagnosis of the site of brain tumors and performs the first successful intercranial surgery.
• Patrick Manson begins studying filariasis infection in humans.
• Meharry Medical College founded in Nashville, Tennessee as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College; it is the first medical school for African Americans in the Southern United States.

Technology

• February 14 – Scottish American inventor Alexander Graham Bell and American electrical engineer Elisha Gray each file a patent for the telephone, initiating the Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy.
• March 7 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for the telephone.^[6]
• March 10 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful bi-directional telephone call, saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you".
• April – Joseph Zentmayer makes his Centennial microscope in the United States.
• May 17 – Nicolaus Otto files his patent for the four-stroke engine using the Otto cycle.^[7]
• August 8 – Thomas Edison is granted a United States patent for his mimeograph.
• Emile Berliner invents an improved form of microphone (the carbon-button type) which will be adopted for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.^[8][9]
• Francis Edgar Stanley of Newton, Massachusetts, patents an atomizing paint distributor, a form of airbrush.^[10]
• The Seth Thomas Clock Company is awarded a United States patent for an adjustable wind-up alarm clock.
• Thomas Hawksley first uses pressure grouting to control water leakage under an embankment dam at Tunstall Reservoir in Weardale, County Durham, England.^{[11][12][13][14]}
• Melville Reuben Bissell files a United States patent for an improved carpet sweeper.^[15]

Institutions

• October 4 – First classes begin at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.^[16]
• Elizabeth Bragg becomes the first woman to graduate with a civil engineering degree in the United States, from University of California, Berkeley.^[17]

Awards

• Copley Medal: Claude Bernard^[18]
• Wollaston Medal: Thomas Henry Huxley

Births

• January 5 – Lucien Bull (died 1972), Irish-born pioneer in chronophotography.
• January 23 – Otto Diels (died 1954), German Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
• February 15 – E. H. "Chinese" Wilson (died 1930), English-born plant collector.
• April 22 – Robert Bárány (died 1936), Viennese-born Nobel Prize winner in medicine.
• June 13 – William Sealy Gosset (died 1937), English statistician.
• October 3 – Gabrielle Howard née Matthaei (died 1930), English-born plant physiologist.
• November 9 – Hideyo Noguchi (died 1928), Japanese bacteriologist.
• November 19 – Tatyana Afanasyeva (died 1964), Russian-born mathematician.
• November 25 – Paul Nitsche (executed 1948) Nazi German psychiatrist and eugenicist.

Deaths

• November 26 – Karl Ernst von Baer (born 1792), Baltic German naturalist.
• Undated – Anna Volkova (born 1800), Russian chemist.