The year 1784 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Biology

Publication of the Annals of Agriculture edited by Arthur Young begins in Great Britain.
Peter Simon Pallas begins publication of Flora Rossica, the first Flora of Russia.

Chemistry

Antoine Lavoisier pioneers stoichiometry.
Cholesterol is isolated.

Discovery of Tellurium (Reichenstein) and Tungsten

History of science

Publication of David Bourgeois' Recherches sur l'art de voler, depuis la plus haute antiquité jusque'a ce jour in Paris, the earliest work on the history of flight.

Mathematics

Carl Friedrich Gauss, at the age of seven, pioneers the field of summation with the formula summing 1:n as (n(n+1))/2.

Medicine

Madame du Coudray, pioneer of modern midwifery in France, retires.
Benjamin Franklin makes the first known specific reference (in a letter) to the wearing of bifocal spectacles.[1]
John Hunter first describes the condition phlebitis.

Paleontology

The first description of a Pterodactylus fossil is made by Cosimo Alessandro Collini, although he is unable to determine what kind of creature it is.[2][3][4]

Physics

French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb formulated Columb's law

January 15 - Henry Cavendish's paper to the Royal Society of London, Experiments on Air, reveals the composition of water.[5]

Technology

June 4 - Elizabeth Thible becomes the first woman passenger in a hot air balloon, at Lyon, France.[6]
August 21 - Joseph Bramah receives his first lock patent in London.
Henry Cort of Funtley, England, applies the coal-fired reverbatory furnace to the puddling process for conversion of cast to wrought iron.[7]

Awards

Copley Medal: Edward Waring

Births

March 12 - William Buckland, English geologist and paleontologist (d. 1856)
June 17 - Andrew Crosse, English 'gentleman scientist', pioneer experimenter in electricity (d. 1855)
July 22 - Friedrich Bessel, German mathematician (d. 1846)

1783 Birth of François Magendie

Deaths

17 April 1783 Death of Christian Mayer in Heidelberg, Germany

May 12 - Abraham Trembley, Swiss naturalist (b. 1710)
September 1 - Jean-François Séguier, French astronomer and botanist (b. 1703)
September 4 - César-François Cassini de Thury, French astronomer (b. 1714)

18 September 1783 Death of Leonhard Euler in Saint Petersburg, Russia

29 October 1783, Death of Jean le Rond d'Alembert [Dalembert], in Paris, France

References

^ The College of Optometrists. "The 'Inventor' of Bifocals?". Archived from the original on 13 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-21.
^ Collini, C. A. (1784). "Sur quelques Zoolithes du Cabinet d’Histoire naturelle de S.A.S.E. Palatine & de Bavière, à Mannheim". Acta Theodoro-Palatinae Mannheim 5 Pars Physica: 58–103.
^ Taquet, P.; Padian, K. (2004). "The earliest known restoration of a pterosaur and the philosophical origins of Cuvier’s Ossemens Fossiles". Comptes Rendus Palevol 3: 157–175. doi:10.1016/j.crpv.2004.02.002.
^ Unwin, David M. (2006). The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time. New York: Pi Press. ISBN 0-13-146308-X.
^ Cavendish, Henry (1784). "Experiments on Air". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 75: 372–384. JSTOR 106582.
^ Gazette d'Amsterdam 25 June 1784; Journal des sçavans November 1784 pp. 760-762.
^ Gales, W. K. V. (1981). Ironworking. Princes Risborough. p. 8. ISBN 0-85263-546-X.