1753 in science

Astronomy

• Ruđer Bošković's De lunae atmosphaera demonstrates the lack of atmosphere on the Moon.

  Botany

• May 1 – Publication of Linnaeus' Species Plantarum, the start of formal scientific classification of plants.
• June – Establishment in Florence of the Accademia dei Georgofili, the world's oldest society devoted to agronomy and scientific agriculture.

  Chemistry

• Claude François Geoffroy demonstrates that bismuth is distinct from lead and tin.

  Computer science

• January 1 – Retrospectively, the minimum date value for a datetime field in an SQL Server due to this being the first full year since Britain's adoption of the Gregorian calendar.

  Medicine

• James Lind publishes the first edition of A Treatise on the Scurvy.

  Technology

• Benjamin Franklin invents the lightning rod, to ring a bell when struck by lightning, following his 1752 kite and key tests.
• George Semple uses hydraulic lime cement in rebuilding Essex Bridge in Dublin.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Benjamin Franklin

  Births

• March 26 – Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, Anglo-American physicist
• April 28 – Franz Karl Achard, chemist
• August 3 – Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, British statesman and scientist

  Deaths

• August 6 – Georg Wilhelm Richmann, Russian physicist
• December – Thomas Melvill, Scottish natural philosopher