1736 in science
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The year 1736 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Botany
- Charles Marie de La Condamine, with François Fresneau Gataudière, makes the first scientific observations of rubber, in Ecuador.[1]
Earth sciences
- June 19 – French Academy of Sciences expedition led by Pierre Louis Maupertuis, with Anders Celsius, begins work on measuring a meridian arc in the Torne Valley of Finland.[2]
Mathematics
- June 8 – Leonhard Euler writes to James Stirling describing the Euler–Maclaurin formula, providing a connection between integrals and calculus.
- Euler produces the first published proof of Fermat's "little theorem".[3]
- Sir Isaac Newton's Method of Fluxions (1671), describing his method of differential calculus, is first published (posthumously) and Thomas Bayes publishes a defense of its logical foundations against the criticism of George Berkeley (anonymously).[4]
Medicine
- Early 1736 – The “Publick Workhouse and House of Correction” that is to become Bellevue Hospital in New York City is ready for occupancy.[5][6]
- c. October – Winchester County Hospital, established by Prebendary Alured Clarke, the first voluntary general hospital in the English provinces.
Awards
Births
- January 19 – James Watt, Scottish mechanical engineer (died 1819)[8]
- January 25 – Joseph Louis Lagrange, Piedmont-born mathematician (died 1813)
- June 14 – Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, French physicist (died 1806)
- July 12 – Louis Lépecq de La Clôture, French epidemiologist (died 1804)[9]
- August 19 – Erland Samuel Bring, Swedish mathematician (died 1798)
- November 3 – Christiaan Brunings, Dutch hydraulic engineer (died 1805)
- John Arnold, Cornish-born watchmaker (died 1799)
- Honoré Blanc, French gunsmith (died 1801)
Deaths
- September 16 – Gabriel Fahrenheit, German-born Dutch physicist and engineer (born 1686)
- October 13 – Georges Mareschal, French surgeon (born 1658)[10]