The year 1755 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

Immanuel Kant develops the nebular hypothesis.[1][2]

Chemistry

Joseph Black describes his discovery of carbon dioxide ("fixed air") and magnesium in a paper to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh.[3]

December 2: Fire burns second Eddystone Lighthouse, Rudyerd's wooden cone of 1709.
Earth sciences

November 1 - An earthquake in Lisbon kills 30,000 inhabitants.
Publication of De Litteraria expeditione per pontificiam ditionem ad dimetiendos duos meridiani gradus a PP, a description of the measurement of a meridian arc carried out in the Papal States by Ruđer Bošković with Christopher Maire in 1750–2.

Mathematics

Leonhard Euler's Institutiones calculi differentialis is published.[4]

Technology

December 2 - The second Eddystone Lighthouse (1709-1755), with a wooden cone, catches fire and burns to the ground; it will be rebuilt in stone.
While serving as Postmaster General of the northern American colonies, Benjamin Franklin invents a simple odometer, attached to his horse carriage, to help analyze the best routes for delivering the mail.
approx. date - Thomas Mudge invents the lever escapement for timepieces.

Awards

Copley Medal: John Huxham

Births

January 28 - Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, Prussian physician, anatomist, paleontologist and inventor (d. 1830).
April 11 - James Parkinson, English surgeon (d. 1824).
June 15 - Antoine François, French chemist (d. 1809)
October 11 - Fausto Elhuyar, Spanish chemist (d. 1833).
October 28 - Jacques Labillardière, French naturalist (d. 1834).

Deaths

May 20 - Johann Georg Gmelin, botanist, natural historian and geographer (b. 1709)

References

^ Woolfson, M. M. (1993). "Solar System – its origin and evolution". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 34: 1–20. Bibcode 1993QJRAS..34....1W.
^ Palmquist, Stephen (1987). "Kant's Cosmogony Re-Evaluated". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18: 255–269.
^ Published 1756.
^ Ball, W. W. Rouse (1888). A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. London: Macmillan. p. 368.