1749 in science
The year 1749 in science and technology involved some significant events.Astronomy
- Pierre Bouguer publishes in Paris, describing some of the results of his work with Charles Marie de La Condamine on the French Geodesic Mission to Peru to measure a degree of the meridian arc near the equator.
Biology
- Georges-Louis Leclerc, afterwards Comte du Buffon, begins publication of his Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière.
Mathematics
- April 12 – Euler produces the first proof of Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares, based on infinite descent.
Institutions
- April 12 – Official opening of the Radcliffe Library in Oxford, built under the will of the physician John Radcliffe .
- Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin appointed Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, a position he will hold until his death in 1783.
Awards
- Copley Medal: John Harrison
Births
- February 4 – Thomas Earnshaw, English watchmaker
- March 23 – Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician and astronomer
- May 17 – Edward Jenner, English physician, inventor of the smallpox vaccine
- September 6 – Benjamin Bell, Scottish surgeon
- September 25 – Abraham Gottlob Werner, German geologist
- November 3 – Daniel Rutherford, Scottish physician, chemist and botanist noted for the isolation of nitrogen
Deaths
- September 10 – Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician and physicist
- December 23 – Mark Catesby, English naturalist
