1757 in science

Astronomy

• Nicolas Louis de Lacaille publishes his Astronomiae Fundamenta Novissimus, containing a standard catalogue of 398 bright stars with positions corrected for aberration and nutation.
• Tobias Mayer presents accurate tables of the Moon's motion to the Board of Longitude in Great Britain.

  Chemistry

• Scottish physician Francis Home publishes The Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation, an early presentation of the chemical principles underlying plant nutrition, in Edinburgh.

  Medicine

• December 8 – Opening of the "New Lying-In" or Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, designed by Richard Cassels.
• Albrecht von Haller begins publication of Elementa physiologiae corporis humani in Switzerland.

  Physics

• Leonhard Euler publishes his equations for inviscid flow.

  Technology

• London instrument maker John Bird makes the first navigational sextant.
• Benjamin Franklin invents a three-wheel clock movement, which later leads to several variants in the design of pendulum clocks.
• The Grubenmann brothers complete timber arch bridges in Switzerland which include the longest vehicular bridge spans extant at this date:
• * Crossing the Rhine at Schaffhausen in two spans of 52 m and 59 m
• * A single-span of 67 m at Reichenau

  Awards

• Copley Medal: Lord Charles Cavendish

  Births

• January 17 – John Gough, English natural philosopher
• May 24 – William Charles Wells, Scottish American physician
• June 22 – George Vancouver, English explorer
• July 11 – Johann Matthäus Bechstein, German naturalist
• August 9 – Thomas Telford, Scottish civil engineer
• November 12 – Robert Willan, English dermatologist
• date unknown - Agnes Ibbetson, English plant physiologist

  Deaths

• January 9
• * Louis Bertrand Castel, French Jesuit mathematician and physicist
• * Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientific populariser
• August 28 – David Hartley, English physician and psychologist
• October 17 – René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French physicist