1737 in science

Astronomy

• May 28 – The planet Venus passes in front of Mercury. The event is witnessed during the evening by amateur astronomer John Bevis at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in England.

Botany

• February 27 – French scientists Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau and Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon publish the first study correlating past weather conditions with an examination of tree rings.
• Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, with her own colour illustrations, is published in London.
• Johannes Burman's Thesaurus zeylanicus, a flora of Ceylon, is published in Amsterdam.

Geology

• Francesco Serao is the first person to use the word lava in connection with extruded magma in a short account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius which took place between May 14 and June 4.
• October 11 – An earthquake in Calcutta, India is said to have caused 300,000 deaths; this is now in question: it was probably a cyclone, with deaths estimated at 3,000.
• October 16 – An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 9.3 strikes offshore of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Mathematics

• Divergence of the sum of the reciprocals of the primes proved by Leonhard Euler.

Technology

• John Harrison is given an award from the longitude prize to continue his work on development of a stable marine chronometer in England.

Publications

• Venetian polymath Francesco Algarotti publishes Newtonianism for Ladies, or Dialogues on Light and Colours (Neutonianismo per le dame).

Awards

• Copley Medal: John Belchier

Births

• January 4 – Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, French chemist and politician (died 1816)
• August 14 – Charles Hutton, English mathematician (died 1823)
• September 9 – Luigi Galvani, Italian physicist (died 1798)

Deaths

References

References

1. (2000). "The Cambridge Planetary Handbook". Cambridge University Press.
2. "On the cause of the eccentricity of the woody layers which one perceives when one cuts horizontally the trunk of a tree" (''De la cause de l'excentricité des couches ligneuses qu'on apperçoit quand on coupe horisontalement le tronc d'un arbre'').
3. "A Curious Herbal".
4. (2017). "Geology and Medicine: Historical Connections". Geological Society of London.
5. (2006). "Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes". Infobase Publishing.
6. (2010). "Women's Encounter with Disaster". ismail siriner.
7. Euler, Leonhard. (1737). "Variae observationes circa series infinitas". Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Petropolitanae.
8. (7 October 2015). "Longitude found: John Harrison".
9. (2018). "Samuel Johnson's Pragmatism and Imagination". Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
10. "medal".
11. "Luigi Galvani {{!}} Italian physician and physicist".