1773 in science

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• 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".{{cite web|title=

Joseph Priestley|url=https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/joseph-priestley|website=Science History Institute|accessdate=March 21, 2018}}{{cite book|last1=Bowden|first1=Mary Ellen|title=Chemical achievers : the human face of the chemical sciences|url=https://archive.org/details/chemicalachiever0000bowd|url-access=registration|date=1997|publisher=Chemical Heritage Foundation|location=Philadelphia, PA|isbn=9780941901123|chapter=

Joseph Priestley|pages=[https://archive.org/details/chemicalachiever0000bowd/page/5 5-7]}}{{cite web|title=Carl Wilhelm Scheele|work=History of Gas Chemistry|publisher=Center for Microscale Gas Chemistry, Creighton University|date=September 11, 2005|url=http://mattson.creighton.edu/History_Gas_Chemistry/Scheele.html|accessdate=February 23, 2007}}

• 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.{{cite journal|last=Savours|first=Ann|authorlink=Ann Savours Shirley|date=1984|title="A Very Interesting Point in Geography": The 1773 Phipps Expedition towards the North Pole|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40510304|journal=Arctic|volume=37|issue=4|pages=402–428|doi=10.14430/arctic2224|jstor=40510304|issn=0004-0843|doi-access=free}}

• 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.

• Copley Medal: John Walsh{{cite web |title=Copley Medal {{!}} British scientific award |url=https://www.britannica.com/science/Copley-Medal |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |accessdate=July 21, 2020 |language=en}}
• John Harrison receives the Longitude prize for his invention of the marine chronometer.{{cite web|url=http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/icons-timeline/1750-1800|title=Icons, a portrait of England 1750-1800|accessdate=August 25, 2007|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070817164134/http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/icons-timeline/1750-1800|archivedate=August 17, 2007}}

• January 29 – Friedrich Mohs, German mineralogist (died 1839)
• February 24 - Jean Boniface Textoris, French military surgeon (died 1828){{Base Léonore|LH//2582/41|id=355243}}
• 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)

• July 16 – Nils Rosén von Rosenstein, Swedish pediatrician (born 1706)
• July 23 – George Edwards, English naturalist (born 1693)

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Category:18th century in science

Category:1770s in science