The year 1853 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

• March 17 – Claude Bernard presents his doctoral thesis describing the glycogenetic function of the liver.^[1]
• Anton de Bary publishes the first study demonstrating that rust and smut fungi cause plant disease.

• November 25 – First definite sighting of Heard Island in the Antarctic.
• Alfred Russel Wallace publishes A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an account of the native tribes, and observations on the climate, geology, and natural history of the Amazon Valley.

• Jakob Steiner investigates the Steiner system.^[2]

• August 1 – Under terms of the Vaccination Act in the United Kingdom, all children born after this date are to receive compulsory vaccination against smallpox during their first 3 months of life.^[3]
• William Little publishes a paper "On the Deformities of the Human Frame" in which he gives the first description of pseudo-hypertrophic muscular dystrophy.^[4]
• Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood independently invent a practical hypodermic syringe.
• Antoine Desormeaux produces and names an endoscope illuminated by a kerosene lamp, using it to examine the urinary tract.^[5]

• John Francis Campbell invents the original form of Campbell–Stokes recorder (for sunshine).

• Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci first develop the Barsanti-Matteucci engine, an internal combustion engine using the free-piston principle.^[6][7]
• Sir George Cayley built and demonstrated the first heavier-than-air aircraft (a glider).

• Copley Medal: Heinrich Wilhelm Dove^[8]
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Adolphe d'Archiac; Édouard de Verneuil

• January 24 – Alfred Senier (died 1918), British chemist.
• February 15 – Frederick Treves (died 1923), English surgeon.
• March 2 – Ambrosius Hubrecht (died 1915), Dutch zoologist.
• March 10 – William Hampton Patton (died 1918), American entomologist.
• April 8 – Laura Alberta Linton (died 1915), American chemist.
• July 18 – Hendrik Lorentz (died 1928), Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate.
• September 2 – Wilhelm Ostwald (died 1932), Baltic German chemist.
• September 9 – Pierre Marie (died 1940), French neurologist.

• March 17 – Christian Doppler (born 1803), Austrian mathematician and discoverer of the Doppler effect.
• March 20 – Robert James Graves (born 1796), Irish physician
• April 23 – Auguste Laurent (born 1807), French chemist.
• July 8 – Ernst Friedrich Germar (born 1786), German entomologist.
• September 14 – Hugh Edwin Strickland (born 1811), English geologist and ornithologist.
• October 2 – François Arago (born 1786), French mathematician, physicist, and astronomer.
• October 18 – Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim (born 1771), German naturalist.