1755 in science
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.
Chemistry
- June – Joseph Black's discovery of carbon dioxide and magnesium is communicated in a paper to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh.
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.
Life sciences
- August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof publishes the first record of an amoeba; he names it "der kleine Proteus".
Mathematics
- Leonhard Euler's Institutiones calculi differentialis is published.
Technology
- December 2 – The second Eddystone Lighthouse, 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
Births
- January 28 – Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, Prussian physician, anatomist, paleontologist and inventor.
- April 11 – James Parkinson, English surgeon.
- June 15 – Antoine François, French chemist
- October 11 – Fausto Elhuyar, Spanish chemist.
- October 28 – Jacques Labillardière, French naturalist.
- Maria Elizabetha Jacson, English botanist.
Deaths
- May 20 – Johann Georg Gmelin, botanist, natural historian and geographer