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The year 1786 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

  • January 17 – Pierre Méchain first observes Comet Encke, from Paris.
  • August 1 – Caroline Herschel becomes the first woman to discover a comet, observing from England.

Biology

  • Subfossil bones of the Rodrigues solitaire are discovered.

Exploration

  • Summer – English captain George Dixon begins a year-long exploration of the shores of modern-day British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. He spends the intervening winter in the Hawaiian Islands, where he becomes the first European to visit the island of Molokaʻi.

Linguistics

  • February 2 – In a speech before The Asiatic Society in Calcutta, Sir William Jones notes the formal resemblances between Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, laying the foundation for comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies.

Mathematics

  • Erland Samuel Bring publishes ', proposing algebraic solutions to quintic functions.
  • Joseph Louis Lagrange moves from Prussia to Paris under the patronage of King Louis XVI.
  • William Playfair produces the first line and bar charts.

Technology

  • August – James Rumsey tests his first steamboat in the Potomac River at Shepherdstown, Virginia.
  • Ignaz von Born introduces a method of extracting metals using the patio process in his Ueber des Anquicken der gold- und silberhältigen Erze, published in Vienna.
  • Scottish millwright Andrew Meikle invents a practical threshing machine.

Awards

  • Copley Medal: Not awarded

Births

  • January 5 – Thomas Nuttall, English naturalist (died 1859)
  • February 26 – François Arago, French mathematician, physicist and astronomer (died 1853)
  • February 28 – Christian Ramsay, Scottish botanist (died 1839)
  • April 16 – Thomas Sewall, American anatomist (died 1845)
  • April 28 – Elizabeth Andrew Warren, Cornish botanist and marine algolologist (died 1864)
  • July 24 – Joseph Nicollet, French geographer, explorer, mathematician and astronomer (died 1843)
  • November 3 – Ernst Friedrich Germar, German entomologist (died 1853)
  • December 6 – Johann Georg Bodmer, Swiss mechanical engineer and inventor (died 1864)

Deaths

  • February 25 – Thomas Wright, English astronomer, mathematician, instrument maker, architect, garden designer, antiquary and genealogist (born 1711)
  • May 2 &ndash; Petronella Johanna de Timmerman, Dutch scientist (born 1723)
  • May 4 – Leonardo Ximenes, Tuscan polymath (born 1716)
  • May 15 – Eva Ekeblad, agronomist, first woman in the Swedish Royal Academy of Science (born 1724)
  • May 21 – Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist (born 1742)
  • October 16 – Alexander Wilson, Scottish polymath (born 1714)
  • November 10 – John Hope, Scottish physician and botanist (born 1725)

References