The year 1879 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.

Chemistry

• Per Teodor Cleve discovered the elements holmium and thulium

Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt creates the first laboratory of experimental psychology at the university of Leipzig.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Rudolf Clausius
• Wollaston Medal: Bernhard Studer

Births

• February 22 - J. N. Brønsted (d. 1947), physical chemist.
• March 8 - Otto Hahn (d. 1968), German physicist who received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• March 14 - Albert Einstein (d. 1955), scientist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics.
• May 28 - Milutin Milankovic (d. 1958), geophysicist.

Deaths

• April 16 - Peter Kozler (b. 1824), geographer and cartographer.
• November 5 - James Clerk Maxwell (b. 1831), mathematician and physicist.