Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/May
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- 1753 - Publication of Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, and the formal start date of plant taxonomy adopted by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature
- 1772 - Death of Gottfried Achenwall, German statistician (b. 1719)
- 1824 - Birth of Julius von Haast, German geologist (d. 1887)
- 1851 - The Great Exhibition is opened in London by Queen Victoria.
- 1852 - Birth of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist, neuroscientist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1934)
- 1881 - Birth of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French palaeontologist and philosopher (d. 1955)
- 1893 - The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago, Illinois.
- 1899 - Death of Ludwig Büchner, German philosopher and physiologist (b. 1824)
- 1901 - The Pan-American Exposition opens in Buffalo, New York.
- 1918 - Birth of Gersh Budker, Russian physicist (d. 1977)
- 1930 - The planet Pluto is officially named.
- 1956 - The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public.
- 1978 - The Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council is created to administer government research grants.
- 1683 - Death of Stjepan Gradić, Croatian philosopher and scientist (b. 1613)
- 1802 - Birth of Heinrich Gustav Magnus, German chemist and physicist (d. 1870)
- 1927 - Death of Ernest Starling, British physiologist (b. 1866)
- 1933 - The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness monster is reported.
- 1939 - Birth of Sumio Iijima, Japanese physicist
- 1946 - Death of Simon Flexner, American pathologist and bacteriologist (b. 1863)
- 1979 - Death of Giulio Natta, Italian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1903)
- 1997 - Death of John Carew Eccles, Australian neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1903)
- 2002 - Death of W. T. Tutte, English-Canadian mathematician (b. 1917)
- 1695 - Birth of Henri Pitot, Italian-born French engineer (d. 1771)
- 1713 - Birth of Alexis Clairault, French mathematician (d. 1765)
- 1779 - Death of John Winthrop, American astronomer (b. 1714)
- 1860 - Birth of John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist (d. 1936)
- 1860 - Birth of Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician (d. 1940)
- 1874 - Birth of V. Walfrid Ekman, Swedish oceanographer (d. 1954)
- 1892 - Birth of George Paget Thomson, English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1975)
- 1902 - Birth of Alfred Kastler, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
- 1933 - Birth of Steven Weinberg, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1988 - Death of Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Russian mathematician (b. 1908)
- 1566 - Death of Luca Ghini, Italian physician and botanist (b. 1490)
- 1677 - Death of Isaac Barrow, English mathematician (b. 1630)
- 1733 - Birth of Jean-Charles de Borda, French mathematician, physicist, political scientist, and sailor (d. 1799)
- 1808 - The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences is founded by Louis Bonaparte.
- 1825 - Birth of Thomas Henry Huxley, English biologist (d. 1895)
- 1972 - The Don't Make A Wave Committee, a fledgling environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changed its name to "Greenpeace Foundation."
- 1972 - Death of Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1886)
- 1809 - Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.
- 1833 - Birth of Ferdinand von Richthofen, German geographer (d. 1905)
- 1859 - Death of Peter Gustav Dirichlet, German mathematician (b. 1805)
- 1892 - Death of August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist (b. 1818)
- 1921 - Birth of Arthur Leonard Schawlow, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
- 1925 - In Dayton, Tennessee, John T. Scopes is served an arrest warrant for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.
- 1961 - Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into space, making a sub-orbital flight of 15 minutes on the MR-3 mission.
- 1856 - Birth of Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (d. 1939)
- 1859 - Death of Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and explorer (b. 1769)
- 1871 - Birth of Victor Grignard, French chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1935)
- 1889 - The Eiffel Tower, often regarded as a symbol of modernity, is officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris.
- 1897 - Death of Edward James Stone, British astronomer (b. 1831)
- 1897 - Death of Alfred Des Cloizeaux, French mineralogist (b. 1817)
- 1916 - Birth of Robert H. Dicke, American experimental physicist (d. 1997)
- 1929 - Birth of Paul Lauterbur, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1963 - Death of Theodore von Kármán, Hungarian-American physicist (b. 1881)
- 1617 - Death of David Fabricius, German astronomer (b. 1564)
- 1765 - Death of Alexis Clairault, mathematician (b. 1713)
- 1847 - In Philadelphia, the American Medical Association (AMA) is founded.
- 1895 - In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention: the radio receiver. It is known as Radio Day or Communications Workers' Day in Russia and Radio and Television Day in Bulgaria.
- 1909 - Birth of Edwin H. Land, American inventor and founder of Polaroid (d. 1991)
- 1939 - Birth of Sidney Altman, Canadian-born molecular biologist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1952 - The concept for the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer.
- 1998 - Death of Allan McLeod Cormack, South African-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1924)
- 1698 - Birth of Henry Baker, English naturalist (d. 1774)
- 1788 - Death of Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, Italian-Austrian physician and naturalist (b. 1723)
- 1794 - Death of Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist (executed) (b. 1743)
- 1842 - Birth of Emil Christian Hansen, Danish fermentation physiologist (d. 1909)
- 1985 - Death of Theodore Sturgeon, American science fiction writer (b. 1918)
- 1988 - Death of Robert A. Heinlein, American science fiction writer (b. 1907)
- 1902 - Birth of Andre Michael Lwoff, French microbiologist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)
- 1947 - Birth of H. Robert Horvitz, American biologist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1960 - Death of J. H. C. Whitehead, British mathematician (b. 1904)
- 1931 - Death of Albert Abraham Michelson, Prussian-born American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
- 1950 - Death of Esteban Terradas i Illa, Catalan mathematician, scientist, and engineer (b. 1883
- 1482 - Death of Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, Italian mathematician and astronomer (b. 1397)
- 1746 - Birth of Gaspard Monge, French mathematician (d. 1818)
- 1787 - Death of William Watson, English physician and scientist (b. 1715)
- 1788 - Birth of Augustin-Jean Fresnel, French physicist (d. 1827)
- 1829 - Death of Thomas Young, English physician and linguist (b. 1773)
- 1830 - Birth of François-Marie Raoult, French chemist (d. 1901)
- 1850 - Death of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist and physicist (b. 1778)
- 1910 - Death of Stanislao Cannizzaro, Italian chemist (b. 1826)
- 2003 - Death of Milan Vukcevich, Yugoslavian chemist and chess problem composer (b. 1937)
- 1722 - Birth of Petrus Camper, Dutch anatomist (d. 1789)
- 1752 - Birth of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German anthropologist (d. 1840)
- 1871 - Death of John Herschel, British mathematician and astronomer (b. 1792)
- 1881 - Birth of Theodore von Kármán, Hungarian physicist (d. 1963)
- 1887 - Death of Jean Baptiste Boussingault, French chemist (b. 1802)
- 1891 - Death of A. E. Becquerel, French physicist (b. 1820)
- 1916 - Death of Karl Schwarzschild, German astronomer and physicist (b. 1873)
- 1918 - Birth of Richard Feynman, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988)
- 1924 - Birth of Antony Hewish, English radio astronomer and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1930 - Birth of Edsger Dijkstra, Dutch computer scientists (d. 2002)
- 1934 - Death of Orest Khvolson, Russian physicist (b. 1852)
- 1960 - Death of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., American philanthropist and science patron (b. 1874)
- 1963 - Death of Herbert Spencer Gasser, American physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)
- 1981 - Death of Odd Hassel, Norwegian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1897)
- 1987 - The first heart-lung transplant takes place.
- 1995 - In New York City, more than 170 countries decide to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.
- 1997 - IBM's Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player.
- 1998 - Nuclear testing: In the Rajasthan Desert, India conducts its first underground nuclear tests and prompting its rival neighbor Pakistan to test it's own nuclear weapons.
- 1684 - Death of Edme Mariotte, French physicist and priest
- 1748 - Death of Thomas Lowndes, English astronomer (b. 1692)
- 1784 - Death of Abraham Trembley, Swiss naturalist (b. 1710)
- 1803 - Birth of Justus von Liebig, German chemist (d. 1873)
- 1805 - Birth of William Rowan Hamilton, Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer (d. 1865)
- 1871 - Death of Anselme Payen, French physicist (b. 1795)
- 1880 - Birth of Lincoln Ellsworth, American scientist and polar explorer (d. 1951)
- 1895 - Birth of William Giauque, Canadian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1982)
- 1910 - Birth of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)
- 1941 - Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer in Berlin.
- 1965 - The Soviet spacecraft Luna 5 crashes on the Moon.
- 1994 - Death of Erik Erikson, German psychoanalyst (b. 1902)
- 1588 - Birth of Ole Worm, Danish physician (d. 1654)
- 1795 - Birth of Gérard Paul Deshayes, French geologist (d. 1875)
- 1832 - Death of Georges Cuvier, French naturalist (b. 1769)
- 1857 - Birth of Ronald Ross, English physician and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1932)
- 1880 - In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
- 1884 - Death of Cyrus McCormick, American inventor (b. 1809)
- 1938 - Death of Charles Edouard Guillaume, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1861)
- 1962 - Death of Henry Trendley Dean, American dental researcher (b. 1893)
- 1984 - Death of Stanisław Marcin Ulam, Polish mathematician (b. 1909)
- 2005 - Death of George Dantzig, American mathematician (b. 1914)
- 1701 - Birth of William Emerson, English mathematician (d. 1782)
- 1761 - Death of Thomas Simpson, British mathematician (b. 1710)
- 1796 - Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination.
- 1804 - The Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from Camp Dubois and begins its historic journey by traveling up the Missouri River.
- 1832 - Birth of Rudolf Lipschitz, German mathematician (d. 1903)
- 1899 - Birth of Pierre Victor Auger, French physicist (d. 1993)
- 1973 - Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched. It is the last launch of the Saturn V rocket.
- 1995 - Death of Christian B. Anfinsen, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916)
- 1618 - Johannes Kepler accepts that "the ratio which exists between the periodic times of any two planets is precisely the ratio of the 3/2th power of the mean distances"—the third law of planetery motion. According to his account in the eighth section of the third chapter of the fifth book of Harmonice Mundi, it was "conceived mentally" on March 8, 1618, but initially rejected based on a preliminary calculation.
- 1720 - Birth of Maximilian Hell, Slovakian astronomer (d. 1792)
- 1836 - Francis Baily observes "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse.
- 1857 - Birth of Williamina Fleming, Scottish-American astronomer (d. 1911)
- 1859 - Birth of Pierre Curie, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1906)
- 1951 - Birth of Frank Wilczek, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1957 - Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple.
- 1958 - The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.
- 1960 - The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4.
- 1963 - NASA launches the last mission of the Mercury program, Mercury 9
- 1991 - Death of Andreas Floer, German mathematician (b. 1956)
- 2004 - The largest known prime number at the time of its discovery, 224036583 − 1, is found by Josh Findley and the GIMPS collaborative effort.
- 1718 - Birth of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician (d. 1799)
- 1763 - Birth of Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, French pharmacist and chemist (d. 1829)
- 1782 - Death of Daniel Solander, Swedish botanist (b. 1736)
- 1821 - Birth of Pafnuty Chebyshev, Russian mathematician (d. 1894)
- 1830 - Death of Joseph Fourier, French mathematician and physicist (b. 1768)
- 1831 - Birth of David E. Hughes, American inventor(d. 1900)
- 1845 - Birth of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, Russian microbiologist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1916)
- 1947 - Death of Frederick Hopkins, English biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1861)
- 1950 - Birth of J. Georg Bednorz, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1960 - Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
- 1969 - Venera 5, a spaceprobe from the Soviet Venera program, lands on Venus.
- 1749 - Birth of Edward Jenner, English physician and developer of the smallpox vaccine (d. 1823)
- 1758 - Birth of John St Aubyn, British fossil collector (d. 1839)
- 1765 - Death of Alexis Claude Clairault, French mathematician (b. 1713)
- 1897 - Birth of Odd Hassel, Norwegian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
- 1902 - Archaeologist Spyridon Stais finds the Antikythera mechanism.
- 1916 - Death of Boris Borisovich Galitzine, Russian physicist (b. 1862)
- 1943 - The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC.
- 1969 - The Soviet spaceprobe Venera 6 begins its descent into the atmosphere of Venus, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.
- 2004 - The Stockholm Convention, an international treaty limiting the use of DDT and other persistent organic pollutants, goes into effect.
- 1675 - Death of Stanisław Lubieniecki, Polish astronomer (b. 1623)
- 1711 - Birth of Ruđer Josip Bošković, Serbian atomic theorist (d. 1787)
- 1850 - Birth of Oliver Heaviside, English physicist (d. 1925)
- 1872 - Birth of Bertrand Russell, English mathematician and philosopher (d. 1970)
- 1889 - Birth of Thomas Midgley, American chemist and inventor (d. 1944)
- 1891 - Birth of Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher (d. 1970)
- 1901 - Birth of Vincent du Vigneaud, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1978)
- 1969 - Apollo 10 launches.
- 1974 - Under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.
- 1773 - Birth of Arthur Aikin, English chemist, mineralogist and scientific writer (d. 1854)
- 1914 - Birth of Max Perutz, Austrian-born molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (d. 2002)
- 1939 - Birth of Dick Scobee, astronaut (d. 1986)
- 1971 - The Mars 2 spaceprobe is launched by the Soviet Union.
- 2000 - Death of Yevgeny Khrunov, cosmonaut (b. 1933)
- 1570 - Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues the first modern atlas.
- 1722 - Death of Sébastien Vaillant, French botanist (b. 1669)
- 1755 - Death of Johann Georg Gmelin, German naturalist and geographer (b. 1709)
- 1782 - Death of William Emerson, English mathematician (b. 1701)
- 1793 - Death of Charles Bonnet, Swiss naturalist (b. 1720)
- 1851 - Birth of Emil Berliner, German-born telephone and recording pioneer (d. 1929)
- 1860 - Birth of Eduard Buchner, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1917)
- 1891 - Thomas Alva Edison displays the first prototype kinetoscope.
- 1918 - Birth of Edward B. Lewis, American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
- 1947 - Death of Philipp Lenard, Austrian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1862)
- 1983 - First publications of the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier
- 1996 - First naked eye observation of Comet Hale-Bopp
- 2002 - Death of Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist (b. 1941)
- 1670 - Death of Niccolo Zucchi, Italian astronomer and physicist (b. 1586)
- 1786 - Death of Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist (b. 1742)
- 1792 - Birth of Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, French scientist (d. 1843)
- 1799 - Birth of Mary Anning, British paleontologist (d. 1847)
- 1850 - Birth of Giuseppe Mercalli, Italian volcanologist (d. 1914)
- 1860 - Birth of Willem Einthoven, Dutch inventor and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927)
- 1873 - Birth of Hans Berger, German neuroscientist (d. 1941)
- 1894 - Death of August Kundt, German physicist (b. 1839)
- 1911 - Death of Williamina Fleming, Scottish-born astronomer (b. 1857)
- 1921 - Birth of Andrei Sakharov, Russian physicist and activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (declined) (d. 1989)
- 1923 - Birth of Armand Borel, Swiss mathematician (d. 2003)
- 1945 - Birth of Ernst Messerschmid, German physicist and astronaut
- 1956 - In the Pacific Ocean, Bikini Atoll is nearly obliterated by the first airborne explosion of a hydrogen bomb, part of Operation Redwing.
- 1964 - Death of James Franck, German-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1882)
May 22: International Day for Biological Diversity
- 1868 - Death of Julius Plücker, German mathematician and physicist (b. 1801)
- 1903 - Birth of Yves Rocard, French physicist (d. 1992)
- 1906 - The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine".
- 1911 - Birth of Anatol Rapoport, Russian-American mathematical psychologist, and pianist
- 1912 - Birth of Herbert C. Brown, English-American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
- 1920 - Birth of Thomas Gold, Austrian astrophysicist (d. 2004)
- 1927 - Birth of George Andrew Olah, Hungarian-American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1983 - Death of Albert Claude, Belgian biologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1899)
- 1990 - The Windows 3.0 operating system is released by Microsoft.
- 1992 - Death of Zellig Harris, American linguist (b. 1909)
- 1997 - Death of Alfred Hershey, American bacteriologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1908)
- 1691 - Death of Adrien Auzout, French astronomer (b. 1622)
- 1707 - Birth of Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist (d. 1778)
- 1734 - Birth of Franz Anton Mesmer, Austrian physician/hypnotist (d.1815)
- 1857 - Death of Augustin Louis Cauchy, French mathematician {b. 1789)
- 1884 - Birth of Corrado Gini, Italian sociologist (d. 1965)
- 1887 - Birth of Thoralf Skolem, Norwegian mathematician (d. 1963)
- 1893 - Birth of Ulysses S. Grant IV, American geologist and paleontologist (d. 1977)
- 1895 - Death of Franz Ernst Neumann, German mineralogist and physicist (b. 1798)
- 1908 - Birth of John Bardeen, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1991)
- 1917 - Birth of Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician and meteorologist
- 1925 - Birth of Joshua Lederberg, American molecular biologist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1958 - Explorer 1, the first US Earth satellite, ceases transmission.
- 2002 - The "55 parties" clause of the Kyoto protocol is reached after its ratification by Iceland.
- 1543 - Death of Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer (b. 1473)
- 1544 - Birth of William Gilbert, English natural philosopher (d. 1603)
- 1686 - Birth of Gabriel Fahrenheit, German physicist and engineer (d. 1736)
- 1734 - Death of Georg Ernst Stahl, German physician and chemist (b. 1660)
- 1794 - Birth of William Whewell, English scientist, philosopher, and historian of science (d. 1866)
- 1803 - Birth of Charles Lucien Bonaparte, French naturalist (d. 1857)
- 1844 - The first electric telegram is sent by Samuel F. B. Morse, from Baltimore, Maryland, to Washington, D.C., saying "What hath God wrought?".
- 1949 - Birth of Tomaž Pisanski, Slovenian mathematician
- 1969 - Death of Willy Ley, German-American rocket scientist (b. 1906)
- 1555 - Death of Gemma Frisius, Dutch mathematician and cartographer (b. 1508)
- 1632 - Death of Adam Tanner, Austrian mathematician and philosopher (b. 1572)
- 1789 - Death of Anders Dahl, Swedish botanist (b. 1751)
- 1865 - Birth of Pieter Zeeman, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1943)
- 1880 - Birth of Jean Alexandre Barré, French neurologist (d. 1967)
- 1921 - Jack Steinberger, German-Swiss physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1925 - John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.
- 1935 - Death of Frank Watson Dyson, English Astronomer Royal (b. 1868)
- 1953 - At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test.
- 1961 - U.S. president John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the moon" before the end of the decade.
- 1966 - Explorer 32 launches.
- 1977 - Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope opens in theaters.
- 1983 - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi opens in theaters.
- 1988 - Death of Ernst Ruska, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)
- 1667 - Birth of Abraham de Moivre, French mathematician (d. 1754)
- 1669 - Birth of Sébastien Vaillant, French botanist (d. 1722)
- 1883 - Death of Edward Sabine, Irish astronomer (b. 1788)
- 1902 - Death of Almon Strowger, American inventor (b. 1839)
- 1904 - Death of Georges Gilles de la Tourette, French neurologist (b. 1857)
- 1922 - Death of Ernest Solvay, Belgian chemist (b. 1838)
- 1951 - Birth of Sally Ride, American astronaut
- 1951 - Death of Lincoln Ellsworth, American scientist and polar explorer (b. 1880)
- 1969 - Apollo 10 returns to earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.
- 1970 - The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 becomes the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2.
- 1972 - The United States and the Soviet Union sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
- 1976 - Death of Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (b. 1889)
- 1999 - Death of Waldo Semon, American chemist and inventor (b. 1898)
- 2002 - The Mars Odyssey finds signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.
- 2004 - Death of Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, Russian astronomer (b. 1931)
- 1623 - Birth of William Petty, English scientist and philosopher (d. 1687)
- 1781 - Death of Giovanni Battista Beccaria, Italian physicist (b. 1716)
- 1897 - Birth of John Cockcroft, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1967)
- 1907 - Birth of Rachel Carson, American biologist and science writer (d. 1964)
- 1910 - Death of Robert Koch, German physician andNobel Prize laureate (b. 1843)
- 1914 - Deat of Joseph Swan, English physicist and chemist (b. 1828)
- 1919 - The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.
- 1933 - The Century of Progress World's Fair opens in Chicago, Illinois.
- 1987 - Death of John Howard Northrop, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1891)
- 585 BC - A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates on which systems of chronology can be calculated.
- 1641 - Birth of Janez Vajkard Valvasor, Slovenian polymath (d. 1693)
- 1676 - Birth of Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (d. 1754)
- 1807 - Birth of Louis Agassiz, Swiss-American zoologist and geologist (d. 1873)
- 1836 - Birth of Alexander Mitscherlich, German chemist (d. 1918)
- 1872 - Birth of Marian Smoluchowski, Polish physicist (d. 1917)
- 1892 - In San Francisco, California, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.
- 1936 - Alan Turing submits On Computable Numbers for publication.
- 1942 - Birth of Stanley B. Prusiner, American neurologist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1980 - Death of Rolf Nevanlinna, Finnish mathematician (b. 1895)
- 2001 - Death of Francisco Varela, Chilean biologist and philosopher (b. 1946)
- 2003 - Death of Ilya Prigogine, Russian-Belgian physicist and chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1917)
- 1660 - Death of Frans van Schooten, Dutch mathematician (b. 1615)
- 1675 - Birth of Humphry Ditton, English mathematician (d. 1715)
- 1716 - Birth of Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, French naturalist (d. 1800)
- 1829 – Death of Humphry Davy, English chemist (b. 1778)
- 1896 - Death of Gabriel Auguste Daubrée, French geologist (b. 1814)
- 1919 - Arthur Eddington takes measurements of shifted star positions during a solar eclipse in an attempt to test Einstein's theory of relativity.
- 1972 - Death of Stephen Timoshenko, Ukrainian-American mechanical engineer (b. 1878)
- 1423 - Birth of Georg Purbach, German mathematician and astronomer (d. 1461)
- 1814 - Birth of Eugène Charles Catalan, Belgian mathematician (d. 1894)
- 1901 - Death of Victor D'Hondt, Belgian mathematician (b. 1841)
- 1908 - Birth of Hannes Alfvén, Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1995)
- 1912 - Birth of Julius Axelrod, American biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
- 1912 - Birth of Erich Bagge, German physicist
- 1926 - Death of Vladimir Steklov, Russian physicist (b. 1864)
- 1964 - Death of Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-American physicist (b. 1898)
- 1971 - Mariner 9 is launched toward Mars.
- 1048 - Birth of Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher (d. 1131)
- 1799 - Death of Pierre Lemonnier, French astronomer (b. 1715)
- 1832 - Death of Évariste Galois, French mathematician (b. 1811)
- 1918 - Death of Alexander Mitscherlich, German chemist (b. 1836)
- 1931 - Birth of John Robert Schrieffer, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1941 - Birth of Louis J. Ignarro, American pharmacologist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1976 - Death of Jacques Monod, French biologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1910)
- 1986 - Death of James Rainwater, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1917)
- 2006 - Death of Raymond Davis Jr., American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1914)
