Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/December 18
- 1661 - Birth of Christopher Polhem, Swedish scientist and inventor (d. 1751)
- 1799 - Death of Jean-Étienne Montucla, French mathematician (b. 1725)
- 1829 - Death of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French scientist (b. 1744)
- 1856 - Birth of Sir J. J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1940)
- 1880 - Death of Michel Chasles, French mathematician (b. 1793)
- 1936 - Death of Andrija Mohorovičić, Austro-Hungarian-born Yugoslav seismologist (b. 1857)
- 1939 - Birth of Harold E. Varmus, American scientist, Nobel laureate
- 1949 - Birth of David A. Johnston, American volcanologist (d. 1980)
- 1966 - Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker
- 1975 - Death of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ukrainian geneticist (b. 1900)
- 1994 - Death of Roger Apéry, Greek-French mathematician (b. 1916)
- 1995 - Death of Konrad Zuse, German engineer and computing pioneer (b. 1910)
- 1996 - Death of Yulii Borisovich Khariton, Russian physicist (b. 1904)