1798 in science

The year 1798 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

The element beryllium is discovered by Louis Vauquelin as the oxide in beryl and in emeralds. Friedrich Wöhler and A. A. Bussy independently isolate the metal in 1828 by reacting potassium and beryllium chloride.

Lagrange publishes his Résolution des équations numériques, including the method of approximating to the real roots of an equation by means of continued fractions.
Carl Friedrich Gauss completes his magnum opus, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae.

Edward Jenner publishes An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the Cow Pox, describing the smallpox vaccine, in London.
Charles Bell publishes A System of Dissection Explaining the Anatomy of the Human Body in collaboration with his brother John.
Alexander Crichton publishes An inquiry into the nature and origin of mental derangement; comprehending a concise system of the physiology and pathology of the human mind and a history of the passions and their effects, including a description of a condition resembling the inattentive subtype of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
John Dalton publishes "Extraordinary Facts Relating to the Vision of Colours", describing colour blindness for the first time in print.
Philippe Pinel publishes Nosographie philosophique, ou méthode de l'analyse appliquée à la médecine, emphasising the importance of nosology to medicine. It goes through six editions in the next ten years.
Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring publishes Tabula sceleti feminini in Frankfurt am Main, the first accurate representation of the female skeleton.

The Philosophical Magazine is initiated by Alexander Tilloch to cover the field of natural philosophy; it will still be published more than two centuries later.