The year 1766 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

Lagrange submits a paper on the movements of Jupiter's satellites to the Académie française.

Biology

Moses Harris publishes The Aurelian, or, natural history of English insects; namely, moths and butterflies.

Chemistry

Henry Cavendish publishes his paper "On Factitious Airs". This is generally credited as showing the discovery of hydrogen a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air., since it describes the density of 'inflammable air', which forms water on combustion.

Pierre Macquer publishes his Dictionnaire de chymie.

Exploration

November 15 - Louis Antoine de Bougainville leaves Nantes for a three-year circumnavigation of the world with the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile; the botanist Philibert Commerçon is on board.

Mathematics

Arima Yoriyuki finds a rational approximation of \pi, correct to 29 digits.[1][2]
Euler gives up his post as director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences and returns to Saint Petersburg. On the recommendation of Euler and d'Alembert, Lagrange succeeds him in Berlin, where he will stay for over twenty years.

Medicine

October - Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, England, completed.

Metallurgy

The Cranege brothers experiment with the use of the reverberatory furnace for the production of wrought iron from cast iron using coal fuel at the Coalbrookdale iron works under the sponsorship of Richard Reynolds in England.

Events

Joseph Wright of Derby paints A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery.

Awards

Copley Medal: William Brownrigg; Edward Delaval; Henry Cavendish

Births

July 6 - Alexander Wilson, ornithologist (died 1813)
August 3 - Kurt Sprengel, botanist (died 1833)
6 August 1766, Birth of William Hyde Wollaston, inEast Dereham, Norfolk, England,, chemist (died 1828)
6 September 1766 Birth of John Dalton, chemist and physicist (died 1844)
December 29 - Charles Macintosh, inventor of a waterproof fabric (died 1843)
John Farey, geologist (died 1826)

Deaths
References

^ "Collection of approximations for \pi". 2000. Retrieved 2012-01-05.
^ Hardy, G. H.; Wright, E. M. (1945). An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Henry Cavendish discovers hydrogen as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air.