The year 1760 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Chemistry

Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt investigates inks based on cobalt salts and isolates cacodyl from cobalt mineral containing arsenic, pioneering work in organometallic chemistry.

Geology

John Michell suggests earthquakes are caused by one layer of rocks rubbing against another.[1]

Medicine

Samuel-Auguste Tissot publishes L'Onanisme in Lausanne, a treatise on the supposed ill-effects of masturbation.[2][3]

Physics

Johann Heinrich Lambert publishes Photometria, a pioneering work in photometry, including a formulation of the Beer–Lambert law on light absorption.

Awards

Copley Medal: Benjamin Wilson

Births

April 13 - Thomas Beddoes, reforming English physician (d. 1808)
June 5 - Johan Gadolin, Finnish chemist and mineralogist (d. 1852)
October 23 - Hanaoka Seishū, Japanese surgeon (d. 1835)
Marie-Jeanne de Lalande, French astronomer, (d. 1832)

Deaths

September 11 - Louis Godin, French astronomer (b. 1704)

References

^ "Conjectures concerning the Cause and Observations upon the Phaenomena of Earthquakes". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 51.
^ Singy, Patrick (2003). "Friction of the Genitals and Secularization of Morality". Journal of the History of Sexuality 12: 345–64. JSTOR 3704892.
^ Laqueur, Thomas W. (2003). Solitary Sex: a cultural history of masturbation. New York: Zone Books. ISBN 1-890951-32-3.