1789 in science

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The year 1789 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Anatomy[]

Antonio Scarpa publishes Anatomicæ disquisitiones de auditu et olfactu, a classic treatise on the hearing and olfactory organs.^[1]

August 28 and September 17 – William Herschel discovers Saturn's moons Enceladus and Mimas, which he describes to the Royal Society of London on November 12.^[2]
Maximilian Hell establishes the constellations Tubus Hershelli Major and Minor in honour of Herschel's discovery of Uranus (constellations obsolete by 1930).^[3]

Antoine Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie presents a unified view of new theories of chemistry, containing a clear statement of the law of conservation of mass, defining the nature of elements and denying the existence of phlogiston. He also helps establish the scientific journal Annales de chimie which will still be published into the 21st century.
German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth discovers the element Uranium while studying the mineral pitchblende.

The Slovene mathematician Jurij Vega presents his approximation of π to 140 decimal places of which the first 126 are correct,^[5] a feat not exceeded for more than half a century.

February 4 – James Parkinson gives the first description of human injury from lightning strikes, in a paper read to the Medical Society of London.
Andrew Duncan delivers the first lectures on forensic medicine in Britain, at the University of Edinburgh.^[6]

Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright patents his first practical power loom in England and designs a wool combing machine.
William Wouldhave demonstrates a self-righting rescue lifeboat on the River Tyne in England.

Swiss naturalist François Huber devises the "leaf hive" for the cultivation of honey bees.

April 7 – Petrus Camper, Dutch comparative anatomist (born 1722)
May 25 – Anders Dahl, Swedish botanist for whom the dahlia is named (born 1751)
undated – Angélique du Coudray, French pioneer of modern midwifery (born 1712)

^ Richardson, Benjamin Ward (1886). "Antonio Scarpa, F.R.S., and Surgical Anatomy". The Asclepiad. London: Longmans, Green and Co. 4 (16): 128–157. Retrieved 2008-06-10.
^ Herschel, William (1 January 1790). "Account of the Discovery of a Sixth and Seventh Satellite of the Planet Saturn; with Remarks on the Construction of its Ring, its Atmosphere, its Rotation on an Axis, and its spheroidical Figure". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. London. 80: 1–20. doi:10.1098/rstl.1790.0001.
^ Ridpath, Ian. "Telescopium Herschelii". Star Tales. Retrieved 2016-03-08.
^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Jussieu, De" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 593–4.
^ Vega, Géorge (1789-08-20). "Détermination de la Demi-Circonférence d'un Cercle" (PDF). Nova Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae. Saint Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences. 9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-02-04. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
^ Forbes, Thomas Rogers (1985). Surgeons at the Bailey: English Forensic Medicine to 1878. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-300-03338-0.
^ "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 21 July 2020.