1776 in science

The year 1776 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

• Lagrange publishes a paper on the stability of planetary orbits.

Botany

• William Withering publishes The Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain, the first flora in English based on Linnaean taxonomy.

Chemistry

• James Keir begins publication of A Dictionary of Chemistry in London, a translation into English of Pierre Macquer's Dictionnaire de chymie (1766).

Exploration

• July 12 – Captain James Cook sets off from Plymouth, England, in HMS Resolution on his third voyage, to the Pacific Ocean and Arctic.

Geology

• James Keir suggests that some rocks, such as those at the Giant's Causeway, might have been formed by the crystallisation of molten lava.

Mathematics

• Jean Baptiste Meusnier discovers the helicoid and announces Meusnier's theorem.

Medicine

• November 30 – Sir John Pringle presents "A discourse upon some late improvements of the means for preserving the health of mariners" to the Royal Society of London, commending and publicising Captain Cook's methods for prevention of scurvy at sea.

Technology

• John Wilkinson installs a steam blowing engine at his ironmaking furnace in Willey, Shropshire, England.

Awards

• Copley Medal: James Cook

Births

• February 4 – Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, German naturalist (died 1837)
• February 14 – Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck, German botanist (died 1858)
• April 1 – Sophie Germain, mathematician (died 1831)
• August 2 – Friedrich Strohmeyer, chemist, discoverer of cadmium (died 1835)
• August 6 – Amedeo Avogadro, chemist (died 1856)
• October 13 – Peter Barlow, English mathematician (died 1862)

Deaths

• June 13 – William Battie, English psychiatrist (born 1703 or 1704)
• June 20 – Benjamin Huntsman, English inventor and manufacturer (born 1704)
• November 17 – James Ferguson, Scottish astronomer (born 1710)