1773 in science

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The year 1773 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

Whirlpool Galaxy

October 13 – French astronomer Charles Messier discovers the Whirlpool Galaxy (pictured), an interacting, grand design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici.
Lagrange presents his work on the secular equation of the Moon to the Académie française, introducing the idea of the potential of a body. He also publishes on the attraction of ellipsoids.

Hilaire Rouelle discovers urea.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley independently isolate oxygen, called by Priestley "dephlogisticated air" and Scheele "fire air".[1][2][3]
Antoine Baumé publishes his textbook Chymie expérimentale et raisonnée in Paris.

January 17 – English Captain James Cook becomes the first European explorer to cross the Antarctic Circle.
Spring – English Captain Tobias Furneaux explores the coast of Van Diemen's Land.
June 4–September 30 – British Royal Navy Phipps expedition towards the North Pole, which produces the first scientific description of the polar bear and the ivory gull.[4]

Scottish judge James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, begins publication of Of the Origin and Progress of Language, a contribution to evolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment.

Lagrange considers a functional determinant of order 3, a special case of a Jacobian. He also proves the expression for the volume of a tetrahedron with one of the vertices at the origin as one sixth of the absolute value of the determinant formed by the coordinates of the other three vertices.

October 12 – North America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Medical Society of London founded by John Coakley Lettsom.
Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau proposes the use of "muriatic acid gas" (hydrogen chloride) for fumigation of buildings.

David Hartley patents a method of fireproofing construction for buildings and ships in Britain.

Istanbul Technical University is established (under the original name of Royal School of Naval Engineering) as the world's first comprehensive institution of higher learning dedicated to engineering education.

January 29 – Friedrich Mohs, German mineralogist (died 1839)
February 24 - Jean Boniface Textoris, French military surgeon (died 1828)[7]
April 9 – Marie Boivin, French midwife, inventor and obstetrics writer (died 1841)
May 19 – Arthur Aikin, English chemist and mineralogist (died 1854)
June 13 – Thomas Young, English physicist (died 1829)
June 29 (bapt.) – John Bostock, English physician and geologist (died 1846)
July 23 – Thomas Brisbane, Scottish astronomer and Governor of New South Wales (died 1860)
August 23 – Abraham Colles, Anglo-Irish surgeon (died 1843)
October 28 – Simon Goodrich, English mechanical engineer (died 1847)
December 21 – Robert Brown, Scottish botanist (died 1858)
December 27 – George Cayley, English pioneer of heavier-than-air flight (died 1857)

"Joseph Priestley". Science History Institute. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
Bowden, Mary Ellen (1997). "Joseph Priestley". Chemical achievers : the human face of the chemical sciences. Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Foundation. pp. 5-7. ISBN 9780941901123.
"Carl Wilhelm Scheele". History of Gas Chemistry. Center for Microscale Gas Chemistry, Creighton University. 2005-09-11. Retrieved 2007-02-23.
Savours, Ann (1984). ""A Very Interesting Point in Geography": The 1773 Phipps Expedition towards the North Pole". Arctic. 37 (4): 402–428. doi:10.14430/arctic2224. ISSN 0004-0843. JSTOR 40510304.
"Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
"Icons, a portrait of England 1750-1800". Archived from the original on 17 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
"Notice no. LH//2582/41". Base Léonore (in French).

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