1795 in science

The year 1795 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

• December 13 – A meteorite falls to earth at Wold Newton, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the first to be recognised in modern times.

Botany

• National Botanic Gardens (Ireland) opened by the Royal Dublin Society.

Mathematics

• The 18-year-old Carl Friedrich Gauss develops the basis for the method of least squares analysis.^[1]

Medicine

• The British Royal Navy makes the use of lemon juice mandatory to prevent scurvy, largely due to the influence of Gilbert Blane.^[2]

Metrology

• April 7 – The gram is decreed in France to be equal to "the absolute weight of a volume of water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the metre, at the temperature of melting ice."^[3]

Paleontology

• Georges Cuvier identifies the fossilised bones of a huge animal found in the Netherlands in 1770 as belonging to an extinct reptile.

Technology

• November 30 – Joseph Bramah is granted a British patent for hydraulic machinery, notably the hydraulic press.^[4]

Zoology

• Johann Matthäus Bechstein publishes his treatise on songbirds Naturgeschichte der Stubenvögel ("Natural History of Cage Birds") in Gotha.
• Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire publishes "Histoire des Makis, ou singes de Madagascar", introducing his theory of the unity of organic composition.

Publications

• Leonhard Euler's Letters to a German Princess, On Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy are first translated into English by Scottish minister Henry Hunter, targeted at women, whom Hunter felt Euler intended to educate.^[5][6]

Awards

• Copley Medal: Jesse Ramsden

Births

• June 30 – Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, French chemist (died 1877)
• December 8 – Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish astronomer (died 1874)
• December 21
  • Francisco Javier Muñiz, Argentine physician and paleontologist (died 1871)
  • John Russell, English dog breeder (died 1883)

Deaths

• March 21 – Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist (born 1714)
• July 3 – Antonio de Ulloa, Spanish explorer (born 1716)
• June 9 – François Chopart, French surgeon (born 1743)
• June 24 – William Smellie, Scottish naturalist (born 1740)
• October 1 – Robert Bakewell, English agriculturalist and geneticist (born 1725)
• Date unknown - Marie Marguerite Bihéron, French anatomist (born 1719)

References