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| b. Chemistry, Biology, and Geology |
| 1799–1805 |
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| Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) founded comparative anatomy on functional grounds, maintaining that the parts of the organism are correlated to the functioning whole. | 1 |
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| 1800–2 |
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| Marie-François Bichat (1771–1802) stimulated the separate and systematic study of each anatomical structure and physiological function by his classification of the body into textures, or tissus, each with its particular vital property. | 2 |
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| 1801 |
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| Claude Berthollet (1748–1822) opposed the prevailing doctrine of elective affinities with his law of mass action. | 3 |
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| 1802 |
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| John Playfair (1748–1819), friend and disciple of James Hutton (1726–97), produced Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, bringing a clear exposition of uniformitarianism to a wide audience and establishing this philosophy as the basis of modern geology. | 4 |
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| 1802–4 |
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| Jean d'Aubuisson de Voisins (1769–1819) and Leopold von Buch (1774–1853), two of the most illustrious students of Abraham Werner (c. 1749–1817), accepted the volcanic origin of basalt, signaling the defeat of Wernerian neptunism. | 5 |
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| 1804 |
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| Nicholas de Saussure (1767–1845) explained the process of photosynthesis in terms of the new chemistry of Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94). | 6 |
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| 1807 |
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| Humphry Davy (1778–1829), using the new voltaic battery, isolated the metals potassium and sodium. | 7 |
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| 1807 |
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| Establishment of U.S. Coast Survey, the first U.S. scientific agency. | 8 |
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| 1807 |
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| Foundation of the Geological Society of London, which served as a center for research and discussion and as a model for similar societies in other countries. | 9 |
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| 1808 |
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| John Dalton (1766–1844) published his New System of Chemical Philosophy, which established the quantitative atomic theory in chemistry. | 10 |
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| 1808 |
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| Joseph Gay-Lussac (1778–1850) announced his discovery of the law of combining volumes for gases, that is, the ratios of the volumes of reacting gases are small whole numbers. | 11 |
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