1799 in science

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The year 1799 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Archaeology

• July 15 - In the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (Rashid), French Captain Pierre Bouchard finds the Rosetta Stone, which will become the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.
• July 25 - At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte gains French control of Egyptian artifacts by defeating 10,000 Ottoman Mamluk troops under Mustafa Pasha.

Astronomy

• Pierre-Simon Laplace begins publication of Méchanique céleste.

Biology

• Thomas Beddoes makes the first recorded use of the word Biology in its modern sense.
• George Shaw of the British Museum publishes the first scientific description of the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus Shaw) in his magazine The Naturalists' Miscellany.

Exploration

• Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland begin a five-year exploration of the natural history of South America.

Geology

• by summer - William Smith produces the first large-scale geological map, of the area round Bath, Somerset, England.
• December 11 - Smith draws up a table of strata round Bath.

History of science

• Benjamin Hutchinson publishes Biographia Medica in London, the first English language historical dictionary of international medical biography.

Mathematics

• William Wallace becomes the first to publish the concept of the Simson line.

Medicine

• Caleb Parry publishes An Inquiry Into the Symptoms and Causes of the Syncope Anginosa Commonly Called Angina Pectoris, illustrated by Dissections, describing the mechanisms for Angina.
• Maria Dalle Donne becomes the first female Doctor of Medicine, at the University of Bologna.

Metrology

• An all-platinum kilogramme prototype is fabricated with the objective of equalling as closely as feasible the mass of one cubic decimetre of water at 4 °C. The prototype is presented to the Archives of the French Republic in June and on December 10 is formally ratified as the Kilogramme des Archives and the kilogramme defined as being equal to its mass. This standard holds for the next ninety years.

Mineralogy

• Twelve-year-old Conrad John Reed finds what he described as a "heavy yellow rock" along Little Meadow Creek in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, and makes it a doorstop in his home. Conrad's father, John Reed, learns that the rock is actually gold in 1802, initiating the first gold rush in the United States.

Paleontology

• Vice President of the United States Thomas Jefferson, writing in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4, describes the bones of Megalonyx jeffersonii, an extinct ground sloth.

Physics

• Annalen der Physik first published.

Technology

• Eli Whitney, holding a January 1798 United States government contract for the manufacture of muskets, is introduced by Oliver Wolcott, Jr. to the French concept of interchangeable parts, an origin of the American system of manufacturing.

Awards

• Copley Medal: John Hellins

Births

• May 21 - Mary Anning, English paleontologist (d. 1847)
• June 18 - Prosper Ménière, French physician (d. 1862)
• September 8 - James Bowman Lindsay, Scottish inventor (d. 1862)
• December 20 - Nicholas Callan, Irish physicist (d. 1864)
• December 30 - David Douglas, Scottish botanist (d. 1834)
• December (prob.) - Maria Ann Sherwood, English-born horticulturalist (d. 1870)

Deaths

• January 17 - Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician (b. 1718)
• February 12 - Lazzaro Spallanzani, Italian physiologist (b. 1729)
• February 19 - Jean-Charles de Borda, French mathematician and physicist (b. 1733)
• August 2 - Jacques Étienne Montgolfier, French inventor (b. 1745)
• October 6 - William Withering, English physician, discoverer of digitalis (b. 1741)
• December 6 - Joseph Black, Scottish chemist and physicist (b. 1728)
• December 31 - Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, French naturalist (b. 1716)