Bradley, a successor of Flamsteed at Greenwich, made many important astronomical discoveries while carrying on the star maps. He discovered the aberration of light and the mutation of the earth's axis.
Locaille studied the parallax of the sun and made numerous stellar observations at the Cape of Good Hope in 1751. He located the positions of 10,000 stars in the southern hemisphere.
Measurements were made in Peru, Lapland, and elsewhere to discover data regarding the earth's curvature. Pendulum observations to detect variations of gravity were made in many countries. Maskelyne, the astronomer royal, made observations on the transit of Venus at St. Helena in 1761. On this expedition he perfected the method of finding longitude at sea by lunar distances.
Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, and subsequently found its satellites. Many star groups, double stars and nebulæ were discovered by him and he found that the solar system is traveling through space in the direction of a point in or near the constellation of Hercules.
Greenwich observatory was publishing at the end of the eighteenth century the Nautical Almanac, and annual reports on star and meteorological observations as well as important astronomical monographs. Similar publications were founded in the next century in France, Germany, and Italy.
The discoveries in mathematics during the eighteenth century included the differential, integral, and other forms of the calculus, differential equations, and various formulæ for dynamics, mechanics, and physical and astronomical calculations. Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, D'Alembert, and Carnot were prominent mathematical investigators.
Heat in earlier times had been regarded as an imponderable substance called caloric which was supposed to be emitted by hot and absorbed by cold bodies. Thus the expansion of mercury was explained by the addition of caloric and not by the increase of distance between the molecules. Francis Bacon and the Scotch chemist Black did the preliminary work which enabled Count Rumford finally to establish the true theory of heat. Watt and Newcomen were attracted by these studies and reduced their theories to practice in the steam engine. Black described specific and latent heat and invented, and used, the calorimeter bearing his name.