1678 in science

Astronomy

• Edmund Halley publishes a catalogue of 341 southern stars—the first systematic southern sky survey.

  Physics

• Christiaan Huygens publishes his Traité de la Lumière/Treatise on Light, which states his principle of wavefront sources.
• Robert Hooke discovers the fundamental law of elasticity when he finds that the stress exerted is proportional to the strain produced.

  Zoology

• Publication of English Spiders by Martin Lister, the first book devoted to spiders.

  Births

• April 14 – Abraham Darby I, ironmaster
• July 16 – Jakob Hermann, mathematician
• October 27 – Pierre Raymond de Montmort, mathematician
• November 26 – Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan, geophysicist
• December 2 – Nicolaas Kruik, cartographer and meteorologist
• unknown – Pierre Fauchard, physician and "father of modern dentistry"

  Deaths

• November 28 – Willem Piso, physician and naturalist