1782 in science

Aviation

• December 14 – The Montgolfier brothers first test fly a hot air balloon; it floats nearly.

Biology

• Jesuit abbot Juan Ignacio Molina publishes Saggio sulla Storia Naturale del Chili in Spain, the first account of the natural history of his native Chile, describing many species to science for the first time.

Chemistry

• Telluride minerals are first discovered in a gold mine in Kleinschlatten, Transylvania by Austrian mineralogist Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein.
• Winter 1782–83 – Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace begin to use the world's first ice calorimeter to determine the heat evolved in various chemical changes, marking the foundation of thermochemistry.

Medicine

• May – First patient admitted to Montrose Lunatic Asylum, the first such institution to be founded in Scotland, largely due to Susan Carnegie of Charleton.
• September – Nottingham General Hospital opens to patients in England.

Physics

• Jean-Paul Marat publishes Recherches physiques sur l'électricité
• Giordano Riccati publishes experiments determining what will later be known as Young's modulus.

Technology

• John Arnold patents his improvements in the construction of marine chronometers in Britain.

Institutions

• Princess Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova is appointed Director of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences in Saint Petersburg.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Richard Kirwan

Births

• April 7 - Marie-Anne Libert, Belgian botanist
• June 3 – Charles Waterton, English naturalist and explorer
• June 16 – Olry Terquem, French Jewish geometer

Deaths

• January 18 – Sir John Pringle, Scottish-born physician
• March 17 – Daniel Bernoulli, Dutch-Swiss mathematician
• April 15 – Elisabeth Christina von Linné, Swedish botanist
• May 6 – Christine Kirch, German astronomer
• May 16 – Daniel Solander, Swedish-born botanist
• May 20 – William Emerson, English mathematician