1766 in science

Astronomy

• Lagrange submits a paper on the movements of Jupiter's satellites to the French Academy of Sciences.

  Biology

• April 9 – American botanist John Bartram completes his first exploration and cataloging of North American plants after more than nine months.
• Moses Harris publishes The Aurelian, or, Natural History of English Insects; Namely, Moths and Butterflies.
• English painter George Stubbs publishes The Anatomy of the Horse.

  Chemistry

• May 29 – Henry Cavendish presents to the Royal Society of London his paper "On Factitious Airs". This is generally credited as showing the discovery of hydrogen, since it describes the density of 'inflammable air', which forms water on combustion.
• Pierre Macquer publishes his Dictionnaire de chymie.

  Exploration

• November 15 – Louis Antoine de Bougainville leaves Nantes for a three-year circumnavigation of the world with the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile; the botanist Philibert Commerçon is on board.

  Mathematics

• Arima Yoriyuki finds a rational approximation of Pi|, correct to 29 digits.
• Euler gives up his post as director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences and returns to Saint Petersburg. On the recommendation of Euler and d'Alembert, Lagrange succeeds him in Berlin, where he will stay for over twenty years.

  Medicine

• October – Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, England, completed.

  Metallurgy

• The Cranege brothers experiment with the use of the reverberatory furnace for the production of wrought iron from cast iron using coal fuel at the Coalbrookdale iron works under the sponsorship of Richard Reynolds in England.

  Events

• Joseph Wright of Derby paints A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery.

  Awards

• Copley Medal: William Brownrigg; Edward Delaval; Henry Cavendish

  Births

• July 6 – Alexander Wilson, Scottish-born ornithologist
• July 8 – Dominique Jean Larrey, French surgeon, pioneer of battlefield medicine
• August 3 – Kurt Sprengel, German botanist
• August 6 – William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist
• September 6 – John Dalton, English chemist and physicist
• September 24 – John Farey, Sr., English geologist
• December 26 – William Goforth, American physician and paleontologist
• December 29 – Charles Macintosh, Scottish inventor of a waterproof fabric

  Deaths

• March 10 - Jane Colden, American botanist
• May 5 – Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar
• November 29 – John Wyatt, English inventor