1785 in science

In 1785 there were various scientific and technological developments, some of which are presented below.

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Founded Dansink Observatory .
Andre Michaud was appointed royal botanist of Louis XVI and sent to the United States to find plants for acclimatization in the forests, parks and gardens of France.
Jean-Pierre Francois Blanchard and John Jeffries successfully crossed the English Channel in a hot air balloon starting from Dover and landing in Calais .

The French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb published the first of seven articles on electrostatics (the last article appeared in 1789). In these articles, the law of the interaction of electric charges ( Coulomb's law ), as well as the regularity of the distribution of electric charges on the surface of a conductor, was described and justified by exact experiments. Coulomb introduced the concepts of magnetic moment and polarization of charges. The similarity of the Coulomb law with the law of universal gravitation made it possible in a short time (by 1828) to complete the mathematical foundations of electrostatics, using previously well-developed analytical methods ^[1] .
The Marquis of Condorcet published one of his most famous works, “Reasoning on the Application of Analysis to the Evaluation of Elections by a Majority of Votes” ( French Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix ). For the first time, it outlines the “ Condorcet method ” - a voting algorithm that provides a choice by a real majority of votes. The " Condorcet paradox " is also described there - the case of non-transitivity of choice in the case of three options.

January 4 - Jacob Grimm , German philologist (d. 1863 ).
January 15 - William Prout , an English chemist and doctor.
March 22 - Adam Sedgwick , a British scientist, one of the founders of modern geology. He introduced the concepts of the Devonian and Cambrian geological periods.
July 6 - William Hooker , English systematic botanist.