1756 in science

Chemistry

• Joseph Black describes how carbonates become more alkaline when they lose carbon dioxide, whereas the taking-up of carbon dioxide reconverts them.
• Scottish physician Francis Home publishes Experiments on Bleaching in Edinburgh.
• Mikhail Lomonosov disproves the phlogiston theory of combustion and pioneers the study of oxidation by converting tin to stannic oxide.

  History of science

• Thomas Birch begins publication of The History of the Royal Society of London.

  Technology

• John Smeaton produces the first high-quality cement using hydraulic lime since Roman times for construction of the third Eddystone Lighthouse.
• The recipe for mayonnaise is probably brought back to France by his chef after Louis François Armand du Plessis, duc de Richelieu's military success on Menorca.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Not awarded

  Births

• June 4 – Jean-Antoine Chaptal, French chemist who names nitrogen in 1790
• September 21 – John Loudon McAdam, Scottish highway engineer
• November 30 – Ernst Chladni, German physicist
• December 26 – Bernard-Germain-Étienne de La Ville-sur-Illon, French naturalist
• David Friesenhausen, German-Hungarian-Jewish rabbi, mathematician and astronomer

  Deaths

• February 22 – Pehr Löfling, Swedish Linnean botanist,
• April 16
• * Jacques Cassini, French astronomer
• * Andrew Plummer, Scottish physician and chemist