1755 in science

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The year 1755 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

• Immanuel Kant develops the nebular hypothesis in his Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels).^[1][2]

Chemistry

• Joseph Black describes his discovery of carbon dioxide ("fixed air") and magnesium in a paper to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh.^[3]

December 2: Fire burns second Eddystone Lighthouse, Rudyerd's wooden cone of 1709.

Earth sciences

• November 1 – An earthquake in Lisbon kills 30,000 inhabitants.
• Publication of De Litteraria expeditione per pontificiam ditionem ad dimetiendos duos meridiani gradus a PP, a description of the measurement of a meridian arc carried out in the Papal States by Ruđer Bošković with Christopher Maire in 1750–52.

Mathematics

• Leonhard Euler's Institutiones calculi differentialis is published.^[4]

Technology

• December 2 – The second Eddystone Lighthouse (1709–1755), with a wooden cone, catches fire and burns to the ground; it will be rebuilt in stone.
• While serving as Postmaster General of the northern American colonies, Benjamin Franklin invents a simple odometer, attached to his horse carriage, to help analyze the best routes for delivering the mail.
• approx. date – Thomas Mudge invents the lever escapement for timepieces.

Awards

• Copley Medal: John Huxham

Births

• January 28 – Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, Prussian physician, anatomist, paleontologist and inventor (died 1830).
• April 11 – James Parkinson, English surgeon (died 1824).
• June 15 – Antoine François, French chemist (died 1809)
• October 11 – Fausto Elhuyar, Spanish chemist (died 1833).
• October 28 – Jacques Labillardière, French naturalist (died 1834).
• Maria Elizabetha Jacson, English botanist (died 1829).

Deaths

• May 20 – Johann Georg Gmelin, botanist, natural historian and geographer (born 1709)

References

1. Woolfson, M. M. (1993). "Solar System – its origin and evolution". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 34: 1–20. Bibcode:1993QJRAS..34....1W.
2. Palmquist, Stephen (1987). "Kant's Cosmogony Re-Evaluated". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 18: 255–269. doi:10.1016/0039-3681(87)90021-5.
3. Published 1756.
4. Ball, W. W. Rouse (1888). A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. London: Macmillan. p. 368.