1768 in science

Biology

• Steller's sea cow is hunted to extinction.
• Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti becomes auctor of the class of reptiles through his Specimen Medicum, Exhibens Synopsin Reptilium Emendatam cum Experimentis circa Venena on the poisonous function of reptiles and amphibians. He also publishes Il Dragone describing the olm, one of the first accounts of a cave animal in the western world.
• Caspar Friedrich Wolff begins publication of "De Formatione Intestinarum" in the Mémoires of The Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences, a significant work in the science of embryology.
• Lazzaro Spallanzani challenges the spontaneous generation of cellular life.

Botany

• Bougainvillea is first classified in Brazil by Philibert Commerçon, the botanist accompanying Louis Antoine de Bougainville's French Navy voyage of circumnavigation.
• Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau's Traité des arbres fruitiers is published in Paris.

Chemistry

• March 17 – William Cookworthy is granted a patent for the manufacture of porcelain from kaolinite in England.

Exploration

• Peter Simon Pallas begins a scientific expedition through the Russian Empire.

Mathematics

• Leonhard Euler uses closed curves to illustrate syllogistic reasoning.

Events

• Joseph Wright of Derby paints An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump.

Publications

• Leonhard Euler's Letters to a German Princess are first published, in Saint Petersburg.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Peter Woulfe

Births

• February 15 – Anthony Carlisle, English surgeon
• March 21 – Joseph Fourier, French mathematician
• March 22 – Bryan Donkin, English engineer and inventor
• July 18
• * Jean-Robert Argand, French mathematician
• * Giuseppangelo Fonzi, Italian dentist date unknown
• * Marie-Jeanne de Lalande, French astronomer
• * Edward Donovan, Anglo-Irish natural historian
• * Amelia Griffiths, English phycologist
• * Wang Zhenyi, female Chinese astronomer

Deaths

• January 29 – John Martyn, English botanist
• February 2 – Robert Smith, English mathematician
• April 29 – Georg Brandt, Swedish chemist
• June 15 – James Short, Scottish mathematician and optician
• September 2 – Antoine Deparcieux, French mathematician
• September 11 – Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, French astronomer
• October 1 – Robert Simson, Scottish mathematician
• November 26 – Edward Stone, English polymath