The year 1758 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

Comet Halley reappears as predicted by Edmond Halley in 1705.

Medicine

Angélique du Coudray demonstrates the first obstetric mannequin.

Physics

Ruđer Bošković publishes his atomic theory in Theoria philosophiae naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium ("Theory of natural philosophy reduced to one law of the forces existing in nature").[1]
John Dolland presents his "Account of some experiments concerning the different refrangibility of light" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London)) describing the discovery of a means of constructing doublet achromatic lenses by the combination of crown and flint glasses, reducing chromatic aberration.[2]

Joseph Black formulates the concept of latent heat to explain the thermochemistry of phase changes

Zoology

Carolus Linnaeus applies his binomial system to animal classification.

Awards

Copley Medal: John Dollond

Births

January 20 - Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, French chemist (d. 1836)
March 9 - Franz Joseph Gall, German-born neuroanatomist (d. 1828)
June 29 - Clotilde Tambroni, Italian philologist and linguist (d. 1817)
October 11 - Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer (d. 1840)

Deaths

January 18 - François Nicole, French mathematician (b. 1683)
April 22 - Antoine de Jussieu, French naturalist (b. 1686)
August 15 - Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician (b. 1698)
September 5 (NS) - Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov, Russian chemist (b. c.1720)

References

^ Rowlinson, J. S. (2002). Cohesion: a scientific history of intermolecular forces. Cambridge University Press. p. 49. ISBN 0-521-81008-6.
^ Watson, Fred (2007). Stargazer: the life and times of the telescope. London: Allen & Unwin. pp. 140–55. ISBN 978-1-74175-383-7.