1837 in science

The year 1837 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• January 10 – John Gould reports to the Zoological Society of London that bird specimens brought by Charles Darwin from the Galápagos Islands which Darwin had thought were blackbirds, "gross-bills" and finches are in fact "a series of ground Finches which are so peculiar" as to form "an entirely new group, containing 12 species", an important step in the inception of Darwin's theory.
• March–July – Charles Darwin begins privately to develop his theory of transmutation of species.
• November 6 – Establishment of the Public Garden in Boston (Massachusetts), as a botanical garden, the first in the United States to be open to the general public.

Mathematics

• Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet publishes Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions, using mathematical analysis concepts to tackle an algebraic problem and thus creating the branch of analytic number theory. In proving the theorem, he introduces the Dirichlet characters and L-functions. He also notes the difference between the absolute and conditional convergence of series and its impact in what will later be called the Riemann series theorem.
• Bernard Bolzano publishes Wissenschaftslehre.
• William Rowan Hamilton treats complex numbers as ordered pairs of real numbers.
• Siméon Denis Poisson's lectures on probability (introducing Poisson distribution) and decision theory are published.
• Pierre Wantzel proves that several ancient geometric problems (including doubling the cube and trisecting the angle) are impossible to solve using only compass and straightedge.

Physics

• Michael Faraday introduces the concept of lines of force.

Technology

• February 25 – Thomas Davenport obtains the first United States patent on an electric motor.
• May – Samuel Morse patents his telegraph and exhibits it to the United States Congress.
• June 12 – Cooke and Wheatstone file their patent for the electrical telegraph in the United Kingdom.
• July 19 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel's paddle steamer is launched in Bristol.
• July – Godefroy Engelmann of Mulhouse patents chromolithography.
• November 18 – William Crompton patents the cotton power loom in the United States.
• Louis Daguerre's daguerrotype ' is said to be the earliest known photographic image successfully to undergo the full process of exposure, development and fixation.
• Camille Polonceau patents the Polonceau truss.
• The first electric locomotive built is a miniature battery locomotive constructed by chemist Robert Davidson of Aberdeen in Scotland, and powered by galvanic cells (batteries).