1795 in science

The year 1795 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

• December 13 – A meteorite falls to Earth at Wold Newton, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the first to be recognised in modern times.

Botany

• National Botanic Gardens (Ireland) opened by the Royal Dublin Society.

Mathematics

• The 18-year-old Carl Friedrich Gauss develops the basis for the method of least squares analysis.

Medicine

• The British Royal Navy makes the use of lemon juice mandatory to prevent scurvy, largely due to the influence of Gilbert Blane.

Metrology

• April 7 – The gram is decreed in France to be equal to "the absolute weight of a volume of water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the metre, at the temperature of melting ice."

Paleontology

• Georges Cuvier identifies the fossilised bones of a huge animal found in the Netherlands in 1770 as belonging to an extinct reptile.

Technology

• August 24 – Rev. Samuel Henshall is granted an English patent for a corkscrew.
• November 30 – Joseph Bramah is granted an English patent for hydraulic machinery, notably the hydraulic press.

Zoology

• Johann Matthäus Bechstein publishes his treatise on songbirds Naturgeschichte der Stubenvögel ("Natural History of Cage Birds") in Gotha.
• Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire publishes "Histoire des Makis, ou singes de Madagascar", introducing his theory of the unity of organic composition.

Publications

• Leonhard Euler's Letters to a German Princess, On Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy are first translated into English by Scottish minister Henry Hunter, targeted at women, whom Hunter felt Euler intended to educate.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Jesse Ramsden

Births

• January 6 – Anselme Payen, French chemist (died 1878)
• May 5 – Pierre Louis Alphée Cazenave, French dermatologist (died 1877)
• June 24 – Ernst Heinrich Weber, German physician, psychologist (died 1878)
• June 30 – Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, French chemist (died 1877)
• July 5 – Georg Ernst Ludwig Hampe, German pharmacist, botanist and bryologist (died 1880)
• July 10 – Jean-Baptiste Guimet, French industrial chemist (died 1871)
• November 12 – Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist (died 1856)
• December 8 – Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish astronomer (died 1874)
• December 21
  • Francisco Javier Muñiz, Argentine physician and paleontologist (died 1871)
  • Jack Russell, English dog breeder (died 1883)

Deaths

• January 21 – Samuel Wallis, English navigator (born 1728)
• March 21 – Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist (born 1714)
• May 6 – Pieter Boddaert, Dutch physician and naturalist (born 1730)
• June 1 – Pierre-Joseph Desault, French anatomist and surgeon (born 1744)
• June 9 – François Chopart, French surgeon (born 1743)
• June 17 – Gilbert Romme, French politician and mathematician (born 1750)
• June 18 – Marie Marguerite Bihéron, French anatomist (born 1719)
• June 24 – William Smellie, Scottish naturalist and encyclopedist (born 1740)
• July 3 – Antonio de Ulloa, Spanish explorer (born 1716)
• August 14 – George Adams, English scientific instrument maker (born 1750)
• October 1 – Robert Bakewell, English agriculturalist and geneticist (born 1725)
• December 28 – Eugenio Espejo, Ecuadorian medical hygienist, lawyer and journalist (born 1747)