1758 in science

Astronomy

• Comet Halley reappears as predicted by Edmond Halley in 1705.

Chemistry

• John Champion patents a process for calcining zinc sulphide into an oxide usable in the retort process.

  Medicine

• Angélique du Coudray demonstrates the first obstetric mannequin.
• Scottish physician Francis Home makes the first attempt to deliver a measles vaccine.

  Physics

• Ruđer Bošković publishes his atomic theory in Philosophiæ naturalis theoria redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium.
• John Dolland presents his "Account of some experiments concerning the different refrangibility of light" describing the discovery of a means of constructing doublet achromatic lenses by the combination of crown and flint glasses, reducing chromatic aberration.

  Zoology

• Carl Linnaeus applies his binomial system to animal classification in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: John Dollond

  Births

• January 20 – Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, French chemist
• March 9 – Franz Joseph Gall, German-born neuroanatomist
• March 14 – Franz Bauer, Moravian-born botanical illustrator
• June 29 – Clotilde Tambroni, Italian philologist and linguist
• July 31 – Rosalie de Constant, Swiss naturalist
• October 11 – Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer

  Deaths

• January 18 – François Nicole, French mathematician
• April 22 – Antoine de Jussieu, French naturalist
• August 15 – Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician
• September 5 – Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov, Russian chemist
• October – Elizabeth Blackwell, British botanical illustrator