1778 in science
The year 1778 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Astronomy
- Lagrange delivers his treatise on cometary perturbations to the Académie française.
Chemistry
- Molybdenum discovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
- Antoine Lavoisier, considered "The father of modern chemistry", recognizes and names oxygen, and recognizes its importance and role in combustion.
Earth sciences and exploration
- January 18 – On his third voyage, Captain James Cook, with ships HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, becomes the first European to view the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
- March 6 – October 24 – Captain Cook explores and maps the Pacific Northwest coast of North America from Cape Foulweather to the Bering Strait.
- James Rennell publishes a chart and memoir of the Agulhas Current, one of the first contributions to scientific oceanography.
Medicine
- John Hunter publishes The Natural History of the Human Teeth.
- Samuel-Auguste Tissot begins publication of Traité des nerfs et de leurs maladies, including a classical account of migraine.
- Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring describes the organization of the cranial nerves.
- Publication of Collection of observations on diseases and epidemic constitutions, by Louis Lépecq de La Clôture, work consisting mainly of a 15-year observation of the relations between climate, geography and pathologies in Normandy.
Technology
- Joseph Bramah patents an improved design of flush toilet in London.
- The brothers Hans Ulrich and Johannes Grubenmann complete a bridge across the Limmat at Wettingen in Switzerland, a 60 m span which is the first known use of a true arch in a timber bridge.
Zoology
- Petrus Camper publishes On the Points of Similarity between the Human Species, Quadrupeds, Birds, and Fish; with Rules for Drawing, founded on this Similarity, an early work of comparative anatomy.
- Johan Christian Fabricius publishes his Philosophia Entomologica in Hamburg.
Awards
Births
- February 4 – A. P. de Candolle, Swiss botanist
- May 18 – Andrew Ure, Scottish industrial chemist and encyclopaedist
- December 6 – Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist and physicist
- December 17 – Humphry Davy, English chemist
- December 25 – Joseph Aspdin, English inventor
- Maria Dalle Donne, Bolognese physician
- Anna Maria Walker, Scottish botanist
Deaths
- January 10 – Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, first to develop standard nomenclature for naming species
- February 20 – Laura Bassi, Italian scientist
- March 7 – Charles De Geer, Swedish industrialist and entomologist
- May 6 – Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet, French pharmacist and botanist