1839 births

Gustave Pierre Trouvé (2 January 1839 – 27 July 1902) was a French electrical engineer and inventor in the 19th century. A polymath, he was highly respected for his innovative skill in miniaturization.

Georges Leclanché (9 October 1839 – 14 September 1882) was a French electrical engineer chiefly remembered for his invention of the Leclanché cell, one of the first modern electrical batteries and the forerunner of the modern dry cell battery.

Pierre Louis Rodolphe Julian (13 June 1839 – 2 February 1907) born in Lapalud southeastern France was a French painter, etcher and professor, founder and director of the Académie Julian in Paris. The writer André Corthis (1882–1952), winner of the 1906 edition of the Prix Femina was his niece.

Prof Emil Clement Jungfleisch FRSE MIF (1839-1916) was a French biochemist and pharmacist. He studied molecular dissymmetry.

François Cyrille Grand'Eury (9 March 1839, Houdreville – 22 July 1917, Malzéville) was a French geologist, paleontologist and mathematics teacher.
He studied at the École Loritz in Nancy and at the École des mines in Saint-Étienne, and later worked as a mining engineer in Roche-la-Molière. From 1863 to 1899 he taught classes in mathematics at the École des mines in Saint-Étienne, where in 1883 he received the title of professor.From 1877 he was a member of the Société géologique de France and in 1885 was elected a correspondent member of the Académie des Sciences.He is remembered for his stratigraphic research of coal fields and for his investigations involving the formation of coal. He is credited with establishing the chronological succession of floras associated with the coal seams of the Stephanian stage (named after the development of this stage at Saint-Étienne). He conducted exhaustive studies of coal flora (Cordaites, Calamites, et al), and in 1877 described the genus Tubiculites.

Marie Adolphe Carnot (27 January 1839 – 20 June 1920) was a French chemist, mining engineer and politician. He came from a distinguished family: his father, Hippolyte Carnot, and brother, Marie François Sadi Carnot, were politicians, the latter becoming President of the third French Republic.
He was born in Paris and studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines. He became a member of the Corps des mines, and from 1864 to 1867, served as a mining engineer in Limoges. From 1868 to 1877 he was a professor of preparatory courses and general chemistry at the École des Mines in Paris, where from 1877 to 1901, he worked as a professor of analytical chemistry.In 1881 he was appointed Chief Engineer of Mines, and in 1894, was named Inspector General of Mines. He became director of the École des Mines in 1901, a post he held until 1907. Aside from administrative work and teaching and training many engineers, he wrote a treatise on the chemical analysis of minerals (Traité d'analyse des substances minérales, published 1898) and pursued research. The uranium ore carnotite is named after him.He was honoured with membership of the Académie d'Agriculture (1884) and Académie des sciences (1895), and was made a Commander of the Légion d'honneur (1903). He also pursued a political career.

Julius Oscar Brefeld (19 August 1839 – 12 January 1925), usually just Oscar Brefeld, was a German botanist and mycologist.

Bernhard Bardenheuer (July 12, 1839, Lamersdorf – August 13, 1913) was a German surgeon.
In 1864 he received his doctorate from Berlin, where he studied under Bernhard von Langenbeck (1810-1887). In 1865 he began work as an assistant to Karl Busch (1826-1881) at the surgical clinic at the University of Bonn, afterwards relocating to Heidelberg, where he worked under ophthalmologist Otto Becker (1828-1893) and surgeon Gustav Simon (1824-1876). During the Franco-Prussian War he served in a sick bay at a garrison in Heidelberg.
From 1872 he was a hospital surgeon in Köln, where in 1875 he introduced Listerian antisepsis. In 1884 he received the title of professor, even though he was not a member on any university's academic staff.

Bardenheuer specialized in genitourinary surgery, and in 1887 performed the first complete cystectomy. This operation involved a patient who was suffering from an advanced bladder tumour that affected both ureters. The patient died two weeks after the surgery from uremia and hydronephrosis — nevertheless, Bardenheuer was able to prove the technical workability of the surgery. In 1889 Austrian gynecologist Karl Pawlik performed a successful cystectomy on a patient suffering from papillomatosis of the bladder.In 1909 he performed an autogenous bone graft of the mandible, a procedure that involved replacement of a mandibular condyle with a patient's 4th metatarsal. The "Bardenheuer incision" is named after him, which is a surgical incision used for operative treatment of mastitis. In German medical literature it is referred to as Bardenheuer-Schnitt (Bardenheuer cut) or Bardenheuer-Bogenschnitt (Bardenheuer arc cut).

Adolf Dygasiński (March 7, 1839, Niegosławice – June 3, 1902, Grodzisk Mazowiecki) was a Polish novelist, publicist and educator. In Polish literature, he was one of the leading representatives of Naturalism.

Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer (23 October 1839 – 4 April 1902) was a Dutch painter. He originally worked in the Romantic and Academic styles, but later became an Impressionist.