The year 1738 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Botany

Publication of Hortus Cliffortianus, a detailed description by Linnaeus of George Clifford's gardens at Hartekamp, Netherlands, including the raising of exotic plants such as bananas in a greenhouse.

Mathematics

Abraham de Moivre publishes the second English edition of his The Doctrine of Chances containing a study of the coefficients in the binomial expansion of (a + b)ⁿ.

Medicine

February - Great Plague of 1738, an outbreak of bubonic plague, begins to spread from Banat across central Europe.[1]
Establishment of The Mineral Water Hospital in Bath, England.

Metallurgy

William Champion of Bristol patents a process to distill zinc from calamine using charcoal in a smelter.

Awards

Copley Medal: James Valoue

Births

15 November 1738 Birth of William Herschel, German-born astronomer (d. 1822)

Deaths

June 21 - Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, English agriculturalist (b. 1674)
September 23 - Herman Boerhaave, Dutch physician (b. 1668)

References

^ "XVIII Century". Banat's Historical Chronology for the last Millennium. Genealogy RO Group. Retrieved 2011-06-22.