The year 1749 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

Pierre Bouguer publishes La figure de la terre in Paris, describing some of the results of his work with Charles Marie de La Condamine on the French Geodesic Mission to Peru (begun in 1735) to measure a degree of the meridian arc near the equator.[1]

Biology

Georges-Louis Leclerc, afterwards Comte du Buffon, begins publication of his Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière.

Mathematics

April 12 - Euler produces the first proof of Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares, based on infinite descent.[2]

Institutions

April 12 - Official opening of the Radcliffe Library in Oxford, built under the will of the physician John Radcliffe (d. 1714) (although it does not become a primarily science library until 1810).[3]
Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin appointed Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, a position he will hold until his death in 1783.

Awards

Copley Medal: John Harrison

Births

February 4 - Thomas Earnshaw, English watchmaker (d. 1829)
March 23 - Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician and astronomer (d. 1827)
May 17 - Edward Jenner, English physician, inventor of the smallpox vaccine (d. 1823)

19 September 1749, Birth of Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre, in Amiens, Somme , France
September 25 - Abraham Gottlob Werner, German geologist (d. 1817)

Deaths

September 10 - Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician and physicist (b. 1706)
December 23 - Mark Catesby, English naturalist (b. 1683)

References

^ Ferreiro, Larrie (2011). Measure of the Earth: the Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped our World. New York: Basic Books. p. 376. ISBN 978-0-465-01723-2.
^ Letter to Christian Goldbach.
^ Guest, Ivor (1991). Dr. John Radcliffe and His Trust. London: The Radcliffe Trust. p. 149. ISBN 0-9502482-1-5.