- Feb 6 Edwin Klebs, German physician & bacteriologist (bacterial theory of infection, diphtheria bacillus), born in Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia (d. 1913)
- Feb 6 Ema Puksec, Croatian singer, born in Ogulin, Croatia (d. 1889)
- Feb 6 William Dorsey Pender, Major General (Confederate Army), born in Edgecombe County, North Carolina (d. 1863)
Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907)
Feb 8 Russian chemist and inventor who devised the periodic table of the elements, born in Tobolsk, Russia
- Feb 9 Felix Dahn, German Historian, jurist and poet, born in Hamburg (d. 1912)
- Feb 9 Franz Xaver Witt, German church musician, composer, and priest, born in Walderbach, Bavaria (d. 1888)
- Feb 15 William Henry Preece, Welsh electrical engineer/wireless pioneer, born in Caernarfon, Wales (d. 1913)
- Feb 16 Ernst Haeckel, German biologist (Causes of Evolution) and philosopher (Social Darwinism), born in Potsdam, Prussia (d. 1919)
- Feb 22 Albert Heinrich Zabel, German-Russian harpist and composer (Russian Imperial Ballet), born in Berlin (d. 1910)
- Feb 23 Gustav Nachtigal, German physician and explorer (consul in Tunis, secured protectorates for Germany in central Africa), born in Eichstedt, Brandenburg (d. 1885)
- Feb 26 Aleksander Zarzycki, Polish composer (Warsaw Music Society), born in Lviv, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine) (d. 1895)