User:Marianika/Science timelines

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Contents 1 Natural philosphy 1.1 Works 1.2 Theories 1.3 Controversies 2 Physics 2.1 Thermodynamics 2.2 Classical mechanics 2.3 Electromagnetism and classical optics 2.4 Gravitational physics 3 Astronomy 3.1 Maps and catalogs 3.2 Black hole physics 3.3 Cosmology 3.4 Konwledge about galaxies 3.5 Solar astronomy 3.6 Solar system astronomy 3.7 Discovery of solar system planets and their natural satellites 3.8 Stellar astronomy 4 Biology 5 Chemistry 5.1 Discoveries of the chemical elements 6 Earth sciences 6.1 Geology 6.2 Geography and paleontology 7 Mathematics 8 Medicine 9 Notes

[edit] Natural philosphy

Major branches of natural philosophy include:

• astronomy and cosmology, the study of nature on the grand scale;
• etiology, the study of (intrinsic) causes;
• the study of chance, probability and randomness;
• the study of elements;
• the study of the infinite and the unlimited (virtual or actual);
• the study of matter;
• mechanics, the study of translation of motion and change;
• the study of nature or the various sources of actions;
• the study of natural qualities;
• the study of physical quantities;
• the study of relations between physical entities;
• and the philosophy of space and time.^[1]

[edit] Works

1620 - Francis Bacon 

Novum Organum (Latin)

The New Organon (English)

1638 - Galileo Galilei 

Discorsi su due nuove scienze (Italian)

Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (English)

1644 - René Descartes 

Principia philosophiae

1645 - Ismaël Bullialdus 

Astronomia philolaica (Latin)

1649 - Pierre Gassendi 

Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri (Latin)

1661 - Robert Boyle 

Sceptical Chymist (written in English)

1670 - Isaac Newton 

De gravitatione (Latin)

1686 - Robert Boyle 

A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature (written in English)

1687 - Isaac Newton 

Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (Latin)

Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (English)

1704 - Isaac Newton 

Opticks (Latin)

1789 - Antoine Lavoisier 

Traité élémentaire de chimie (French)

[edit] Theories

heat 

Phlogiston theory (see also UPenn)

Kinetic theory

Caloric theory

[edit] Controversies

Gottfried Leibniz vs. Isaac Newton and René Descartes 

vis viva vs. conservation of momentum

• George E. Smith, "The Vis Viva Dispute: A Controversy at the Dawn of Dynamics", Physics Today 59 (October 2006) Issue 10 pp 31-36. (see also erratum)

[edit] Physics

[edit] Thermodynamics

• 1620 - Francis Bacon reviews a wide range of observations about heat and related phenomena, and suggests that heat is related to motion (Novum Organum, Book II, XI)
• In 1643, Galileo Galilei, while generally accepting the horror vacui of Aristotle, believes that nature’s vacuum-abhorrence is limited. Pumps operating in mines had already proven that nature would only fill a vacuum with water up to a height of 30 feet. Knowing this curious fact, Galileo encourages his former pupil Evangelista Torricelli to investigate these supposed limitations and in doing so invented the first vacuum and mercury thermometer.
• 1669 - J.J. Becher puts forward a theory of combustion involving combustible earth (Latin terra pinguis).
• 1676-1689 - Gottfried Leibniz develops the concept of vis viva, a limited version of the conservation of energy
• 1694-1734 - Georg Ernst Stahl names Becher's combustible earth as phlogiston and develops the theory
• 1702 - Guillaume Amontons introduces the concept of absolute zero, based on observations of gases
• 1738 - Daniel Bernoulli publishes Hydrodynamics, initiating the kinetic theory
• 1761 - Joseph Black discovers that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting
• 1772 - Black's student Daniel Rutherford discovers nitrogen, which he calls phlogisticated air, and together they explain the results in terms of the phlogiston theory
• 1776 - John Smeaton publishes a paper on experiments related to power, work, momentum, and kinetic energy, supporting the conservation of energy
• 1777 - Carl Wilhelm Scheele distinguishes heat transfer by thermal radiation from that by convection and conduction
• 1783 - Antoine Lavoisier discovers oxygen and develops an explanation for combustion; in his book Reflexions sur le phlogistique, he deprecates the phlogiston theory and proposes a caloric theory
• 1791 - Pierre Prévost shows that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are
• 1798 - Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson) performs measurements of the frictional heat generated in boring cannons and develops the idea that heat is a form of kinetic energy; his measurements refute caloric theory, but are imprecise enough to leave room for doubt

[edit] Classical mechanics

• 1638 - Galileo Galilei publishes Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
• 1658 - Christian Huygens experimentally discovers that balls placed anywhere inside an inverted cycloid reach the lowest point of the cycloid in the same time and thereby experimentally shows that the cycloid is the isochrone
• 1668 - John Wallis suggests the law of conservation of momentum
• 1676-1689 - Gottfried Leibniz develops the concept of vis viva, a limited theory of conservation of energy.
• 1687 - Isaac Newton publishes his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
• 1690 - James Bernoulli shows that the cycloid is the solution to the isochrone problem
• 1691 - Johann Bernoulli shows that a chain freely suspended from two points will form a catenary
• 1691 - James Bernoulli shows that the catenary curve has the lowest center of gravity that any chain hung from two fixed points can have
• 1696 - Johann Bernoulli shows that the cycloid is the solution to the brachistochrone problem
• 1714 - Brook Taylor derives the fundamental frequency of a stretched vibrating string in terms of its tension and mass per unit length by solving an ordinary differential equation
• 1733 - Daniel Bernoulli derives the fundamental frequency and harmonics of a hanging chain by solving an ordinary differential equation
• 1734 - Daniel Bernoulli solves the ordinary differental equation for the vibrations of an elastic bar clamped at one end
• 1738 - Daniel Bernoulli examines fluid flow in Hydrodynamica
• 1739 - Leonhard Euler solves the ordinary differential equation for a forced harmonic oscillator and notices the resonance phenomenon
• 1742 - Colin Maclaurin discovers his uniformly rotating self-gravitating spheroids
• 1747 - Pierre Louis Maupertuis applies minimum principles to mechanics
• 1759 - Leonhard Euler solves the partial differential equation for the vibration of a rectangular drum
• 1764 - Leonhard Euler examines the partial differential equation for the vibration of a circular drum and finds one of the Bessel function solutions
• 1776 - John Smeaton publishes a paper on experiments relating power, work, momentum and kinetic energy, and supporting the conservation of energy.
• 1788 - Joseph Louis Lagrange presents Lagrange's equations of motion in Mécanique Analytique
• 1789 - Antoine Lavoisier states the law of conservation of mass

[edit] Electromagnetism and classical optics

• 1604 — Johannes Kepler describes how the eye focuses light
• 1604 — Johann Kepler specifies the laws of the rectilinear propagation of light
• 1611 — Marko Dominis discusses the rainbow in De Radiis Visus et Lucis
• 1611 — Johannes Kepler discovers total internal reflection, a small-angle refraction law, and thin lens optics,
• 1621 — Willebrord van Roijen Snell states his Snell's law of refraction
• 1630 — Cabaeus finds that there are two types of electric charges
• 1637 — René Descartes quantitatively derives the angles at which primary and secondary rainbows are seen with respect to the angle of the Sun's elevation
• 1657 — Pierre de Fermat introduces the principle of least time into optics
• 1665 — Francesco Maria Grimaldi highlights the phenomenon of diffraction
• 1673 — Ignace Pardies provides a wave explanation for refraction of light
• 1675 — Isaac Newton delivers his theory of light
• 1676 — Olaus Roemer measures the speed of light by observing Jupiter's moons
• 1678 — Christian Huygens states his principle of wavefront sources,
• 1704 — Isaac Newton publishes Opticks, a corpuscular theory of light and colour
• 1728 — James Bradley discovers the aberration of starlight and uses it to determine that the speed of light is about 283,000 km/s
• 1746 — Leonhard Euler develops the wave theory of light refraction and dispersion
• 1752 — Benjamin Franklin shows that lightning is electricity,
• 1767 — Joseph Priestley proposes an electrical inverse-square law
• 1785 — Charles Coulomb introduces the inverse-square law of electrostatics
• 1786 — Luigi Galvani discovers "animal electricity" and postulates that animal bodies are storehouses of electricity,

[edit] Gravitational physics

• 1583 - Galileo Galilei induces the period relationship of a pendulum from observation (according to later biographer).
• 1589 - Galileo Galilei invents a hydrostatic balance for measuring specific gravity.
• 1590 - Galileo Galilei formulates modified Aristotelean theory of motion (later retracted) based on density rather than weight of objects.
• 1602 - Galileo Galilei conducts experiments on pendulum motion.
• 1604 - Galileo Galilei conducts experiments with inclined planes and induces the law of falling objects.
• 1607 - Galileo Galilei arrives a mathematical formulation of the law of falling objects based on his earlier experiments.
• 1608 - Galileo Galilei discovers the parabolic arc of projectiles through experiment.
• 1640 - Ismael Bullialdus suggests an inverse-square gravitational force law.
• 1665 - Isaac Newton introduces an inverse-square universal law of gravitation uniting terrestrial and celestial theories of motion and uses it to predict the orbit of the Moon and the parabolic arc of projectiles.
• 1684 - Isaac Newton proves that planets moving under an inverse-square force law will obey Kepler's laws
• 1686 - Isaac Newton uses a fixed length pendulum with weights of varying composition to test the weak equivalence principle to 1 part in 1000
• 1798 - Henry Cavendish measures the gravitational constant

[edit] Astronomy

[edit] Maps and catalogs

• 1603 - Johann Bayer's Uranometria
• 1678 - Edmund Halley publishes a catalog of 341 southern stars, the first systematic southern sky survey
• 1726 - Posthumous publication of John Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica
• 1771 - Charles Messier publishes his first list of nebulae

[edit] Black hole physics

• 1640 - Ismael Bullialdus suggests an inverse-square gravitational force law
• 1684 - Isaac Newton writes down his inverse-square Law of universal gravitation
• 1758 - Rudjer Josip Boscovich develops his Theory of forces, where gravity can be repulsive on small distances. So according to him such strange classical bodies, similar to white holes, can exist, which won't let other bodies to reach their surfaces
• 1784 - John Michell discusses classical bodies which have escape velocities greater than the speed of light
• 1795 - Pierre Laplace discusses classical bodies which have escape velocities greater than the speed of light
• 1798 - Henry Cavendish measures the gravitational constant G

[edit] Cosmology

• 1610 - Johannes Kepler uses the dark night sky to argue for a finite universe
• 1687 - Sir Isaac Newton's laws describe large-scale motion throughout the universe
• 1720 - Edmund Halley puts forth an early form of Olbers' paradox
• 1744 - Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux puts forth an early form of Olbers' paradox
• 1791 - Erasmus Darwin pens the first description of a cyclical expanding and contracting universe
• 1826 - Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers puts forth Olbers' paradox
• 1848 - Edgar Allan Poe offers first correct solution to Olbers' paradox in an essay that also suggests the expansion and collapse of the universe.

[edit] Konwledge about galaxies

• 1610 - Galileo Galilei uses a telescope to determine that the bright band on the sky, the "Milky Way", is composed of many faint stars,
• 1750 - Thomas Wright discusses galaxies and the shape of the Milky Way,
• 1755 - Drawing on Wright's work, Immanuel Kant conjectures that the galaxy is a rotating disk of stars held together by gravity, and that the nebulae are separate such galaxies,

[edit] Solar astronomy

• 1613 - Galileo Galilei uses sunspot observations to demonstrate the rotation of the Sun
• 1619 - Johannes Kepler postulates a solar wind to explain the direction of comet tails

[edit] Solar system astronomy

• 1609 - Johannes Kepler states his first two empirical laws of planetary motion, stating that the orbits of the planets are elliptical rather than circular, and thus resolving many ancient problems with planetary models.
• 1610 - Galileo Galilei discovers Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io, sees Saturn's planetary rings (but does not recognize that they are rings), and observes the phases of Venus, disproving the Ptolemaic system, though not the geocentric model
• 1619 - Johannes Kepler states his third empirical law of planetary motion
• 1655 - Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers Jupiter's great red spot
• 1656 - Christiaan Huygens identifies Saturn's rings as rings and discovers Titan
• 1665 - Cassini determines the rotational speeds of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus
• 1672 - Cassini discovers Rhea
• 1672 - Jean Richer and Cassini measure the astronomical unit to be about 138,370,000 km
• 1675 - Ole Rømer uses the orbital mechanics of Jupiter's moons to estimate that the speed of light is about 227,000 km/s
• 1705 - Edmund Halley publicly predicts the periodicity of Halley's Comet and computes its expected path of return in 1757
• 1715 - Edmund Halley calculates the shadow path of a solar eclipse
• 1716 - Edmund Halley suggests a high-precision measurement of the Sun-Earth distance by timing the transit of Venus
• 1729 - James Bradley determines the cause of the aberration of starlight, providing the first direct evidence of the Earth's motion
• 1755 - Emmanuel Kant first formulates the nebular theory of solar system formation.
• 1758 - Johann Palitzsch observes the return of Halley's comet. The interference of Jupiter's orbit had slowed the return by 618 days. Parisian astronomer La Caille suggests it should be named Halley's comet.
• 1766 - Johann Titius finds the Titius-Bode rule for planetary distances
• 1772 - Johann Bode publicizes the Titius-Bode rule for planetary distances
• 1781 - William Herschel discovers Uranus during a telescopic survey of the northern sky
• 1796 - Pierre Laplace re-states the nebular hypothesis for the formation of the solar system from a spinning nebula of gas and dust

[edit] Discovery of solar system planets and their natural satellites

• o: for date of first human visual observation, either through telescope or on photographic plate (the true "discovery" moment);
• p: for date of announcement or publication.

The planets and their natural satellites are marked in the following colors:

Planets		Dwarf planets
Mercury	Jupiter and satellites	Ceres
Venus	Saturn and satellites	Pluto and satellites
Earth and satellite	Uranus and satellites	Eris and satellite
Mars and satellites	Neptune and satellites

17th century
Date	Name	Designation	Image	Planet/Number Designation	References/Notes
1610s
o: January 7, 1610 p: March 13, 1610	Callisto			Jupiter IV	Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius, [1]. The Galilean moons. Note: One of the moons may have been recorded by the Chinese astronomer Gan De in 364 BC. The Galilean satellites were the first celestial objects that were confirmed to orbit an object other than the Earth.
	Io			Jupiter I
	Europa			Jupiter II
o: January 11, 1610 p: March 13, 1610	Ganymede			Jupiter III
1650s
o: March 25, 1655 p: March 5, 1656	Titan			Saturn VI	Huygens, [2]. Huygens first "published" his discovery as an anagram, sent out on June 13, 1655; later published in pamphlet form as De Saturni luna Observatio Nova and in full in Systema Saturnium (July 1659).
1670s
o: October 25, 1671 p: 1673	Iapetus			Saturn VIII	Cassini, [3]. Cassini published these two discoveries in Découverte de deux nouvelles planètes autour de Saturne (Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, Paris, 1673), translated as A Discovery of two New Planets about Saturn, made in the Royal Parisian Observatory by Signor Cassini, Fellow of both the Royal Societys, of England and France; English't out of French., Philosophical Transactions 8 (1673), pp. 5178-5185.
o: December 23, 1672 p: 1673	Rhea			Saturn V
1680s
o: March 21, 1684 p: April 22, 1686	Tethys			Saturn III	Cassini. Cassini published these two discoveries on April 22, 1686, according to An Extract of the Journal Des Scavans. of April 22 st. N. 1686. Giving an account of two new Satellites of Saturn, discovered lately by Mr. Cassini at the Royal Observatory at Paris., Philosophical Transactions 16 (1686-1692) pp. 79-85. Together with his previous two discoveries, Cassini named these satellites Sidera Lodoicea. In his work Kosmotheôros (published posthumously in 1698), Christiaan Huygens relates "Jupiter you see has his four, and Saturn his five Moons about him, all plac’d in their Orbits."
	Dione			Saturn IV
1780s
o: March 13, 1781 p: April 26, 1781	Uranus			7th Planet	Herschel [4]. Herschel first reported the discovery of Uranus on April 26, 1781, initially believing it a comet: Account of a Comet. By Mr. Herschel, F. R. S.; communicated by Dr. Watson, Jun. of Bath, F. R. S., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 71, pp. 492-501.
o: January 11, 1787 p: February 15, 1787	Titania			Uranus III	Herschel, An Account of the Discovery of Two Satellites revolving round the Georgian Planet., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 77, pp. 125-129, 1787
	Oberon			Uranus IV
o: August 28, 1789 [5] p: November 12, 1789	Enceladus			Saturn II	Herschel, Account of the Discovery of a Sixth and Seventh Satellite of the Planet Saturn; with Remarks on the Construction of its Ring, its Atmosphere, its Rotation on an Axis, and its spheroidical Figure, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 80, pp. 1-20, 1790 (read November 12, 1789).
o: September 17, 1789 p: November 12, 1789	Mimas			Saturn I
Date	Name	Designation	Image	Planet/Number Designation	References/Notes

[edit] Stellar astronomy

• 1672 - Geminiano Montanari notices that Algol's brightness varies
• 1686 - Gottfried Kirch notices that Chi Cygni's brightness varies
• 1718 - Edmund Halley discovers stellar proper motions by comparing his astrometric measurements with those of the Greeks
• 1782 - John Goodricke notices that the brightness variations of Algol are periodic and proposes that it is partially eclipsed by a body moving around it
• 1784 - Edward Piggot discovers the first Cepheid variable star

[edit] Biology

• ?? - Jan Baptist van Helmont performs his famous tree plant experiment in which he shows that the substance of a plant derives from water and air, the first description of photosynthesis.
• 1628 - William Harvey publishes An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
• 1651 - William Harvey concludes that all animals, including mammals, develop from eggs, and spontaneous generation of any animal from mud or excrement was an impossibility.
• 1658 - Jan Swammerdam observes red blood cells under a microscope.
• 1663 - Robert Hooke sees cells in cork using a microscope.
• 1668 - Francesco Redi disproves spontaneous generation by showing that fly maggots only appear on pieces of meat in jars if the jars are open to the air. Jars covered with cheesecloth contained no flies.
• 1672 - Marcello Malpighi publishes the first description of chick development, including the formation of muscle somites, circulation, and nervous system.
• 1676 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes protozoa and calls them animalcules.
• 1677 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes spermatozoa.
• 1683 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria. Leeuwenhoek's discoveries renew the question of spontaneous generation in microorganisms.
• 1767 - Kaspar Friedrich Wolff argues that the tissues of a developing chick form from nothing and are not simply elaborations of already-present structures in the egg.
• 1768 - Lazzaro Spallanzani again disproves spontaneous generation by showing that no organisms grow in a rich broth if it is first heated (to kill any organisms) and allowed to cool in a stoppered flask. He also shows that fertilization in mammals requires an egg and semen.
• 1771 - Joseph Priestley demonstrates that plants produce a gas that animals and flames consume. Those two gases are carbon dioxide and oxygen.
• 1798 - Thomas Malthus discusses human population growth and food production in An Essay on the Principle of Population.

[edit] Chemistry

• 1605: Sir Francis Bacon publishes The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, which contains a description of what would later be known as the scientific method.^[2]

• 1605: Michał Sędziwój publishes the alchemical treatise A New Light of Alchemy which proposed the existence of the "food of life" within air, much later recognized as oxygen.^[3]

• 1615: Jean Beguin publishes the Tyrocinium Chymicum, an early chemistry textbook, and in it draws the first-ever chemical equation.^[4]

• 1637: René Descartes publishes Discours de la méthode, which contains an outline of the scientific method.^[5]

• 1648: Posthumous publication of the book Ortus medicinae by Johann Baptista van Helmont, which is cited by some as a major transitional work between alchemy and chemistry, and as an important influence on Robert Boyle. The book contains the results of numerous experiments and establishes an early version of the Law of conservation of mass.^[6]

• 

  

  Title page of The Sceptical Chymist by Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
  1661: Robert Boyle publishes The Sceptical Chymist, a treatise on the distinction between chemistry and alchemy. It contains some of the earliest modern ideas of atoms, molecules, and chemical reactions.^[7]

• 1662: Robert Boyle proposes Boyle's Law, an experimentally based description of the behavior of gases, specifically the relationship between pressure and volume.^[7]

• 1754: Joseph Black isolates carbon dioxide, which he called "fixed air".^[8]

• 1758: Joseph Black formulates the concept of latent heat to explain the thermochemistry of phase changes.^[9]

• 1773-1774: Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestly independantly isolate oxygen, called by Priestly "dephlogisticated air" and Scheele "fire air".^[10][11]

• 1778: Antoine Lavoisier recognizes and names oxygen, and recognizes its importance and role in combustion.^[12]

• 1787: Antoine Lavoisier publishes Méthode de nomenclature chimique, the first modern system of chemical nomenclature.^[12]

• 1787: Jacques Charles proposes Charles's Law, a corrolary of Boyle's Law, describes relationship between temperature and volume of a gas.^[13]

• 1789: Antoine Lavoisier publishes Traité Élémentaire de Chimie, the first modern chemistry textbook. It is a complete survey of (at that time) modern chemistry, including the first concise definition of the law of conservation of mass, and thus also represents the founding of the discipline of stoichiometry or quantitative chemical analysis.^[12][14]

• 1797: Joseph Proust proposes Law of definite proportions, which states that elements always combine in small, whole number ratios to form compounds.^[15]

• 1800: Alessandro Volta devises the first chemical battery, thereby founding the discipline of electrochemistry.^[16]

[edit] Discoveries of the chemical elements

Already discovered: antimony, arsenic, bismuth, carbon, copper, gold, iron, lead, mercury, silver, sulfur, tin, zinc

Name	Date	Discoverer	Notes
Phosphorus	1669	Hening Brand, later described by Robert Boyle	First element to be chemically discovered.
Cobalt	1732	Georg Brandt
Platinum	ca. 1741	Discovered independently by Antonio de Ulloa (published 1748) and Charles Wood.	Noticed in South American gold ore since the 16th century.
Nickel	1751	Axel Fredrik Cronstedt
Magnesium	1755	Joseph Black
Hydrogen	1766	Isolated and described by Henry Cavendish, named by Antoine Lavoisier
Oxygen	1771	Joseph Priestley	Because of his belief in phlogiston, Priestley did not realize that he had prepared a new element, and thought that he had managed to prepare air free from phlogiston ("de-phlogisticated air").
Nitrogen	1772	Daniel Rutherford
Chlorine	1774	Carl Wilhelm Scheele
Manganese	1774	Johan Gottlieb Gahn
Molybdenum	1778	Carl Wilhelm Scheele
Tellurium	1782	Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein
Tungsten	1783	Juan José Elhuyar and Fausto Elhuyar
Uranium	1789	Martin Heinrich Klaproth	Named after the newly discovered planet, Uranus.
Zirconium	1789	Martin Heinrich Klaproth
Strontium	1793	Martin Heinrich Klaproth
Yttrium	1794	Johan Gadolin
Titanium	1797	Martin Heinrich Klaproth
Chromium	1797	Louis Nicolas Vauquelin
Beryllium	1798	Louis Nicolas Vauquelin	Discovered as an oxide in beryl and emerald; the metal was not isolated until 1828 by Wöhler and by Bussy independently.

[edit] Earth sciences

[edit] Geology

• 1620 - Francis Bacon notices the jigsaw fit of the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean
• 1669 - Nicolas Steno puts forward his theory that sedimentary strata had been deposited in former seas, and that fossils were organic in origin
• 1701 - Edmund Halley suggests using the salinity and evaporation of the Mediterranean to determine the age of the Earth
• 1743 - Dr Christopher Packe produces a geological map of south-east England
• 1746 - Jean-Étienne Guettard presents the first mineralogical map of France to the French Academy of Sciences.
• 1760 - John Michell suggests earthquakes are caused by one layer of rocks rubbing against another
• 1776 - James Keir suggests that some rocks, such as those at the Giant's Causeway, might have been formed by the crystallisation of molten lava
• 1779 - Comte de Buffon speculates that the Earth is older than the 6,000 years suggested by the Bible
• 1785 - James Hutton presents paper entitled Theory of the Earth - earth must be old
• 1799 - William Smith produces the first large scale geological map, of the area around Bath

[edit] Geography and paleontology

• 1620 - Francis Bacon analyzes the scientific method in his Great Instauration of Learning
• 1686 - Edmund Halley presents a systematic study of the trade winds and monsoons and identifies solar heating as the cause of atmospheric motions
• 1686 - Edmund Halley establishes the relationship between barometric pressure and height above sea level
• 1716 - Edmund Halley suggests that polar aurorae are caused by "magnetic effluvia" moving along the Earth's magnetic field lines
• 1770 - The fossilised bones of a huge animal (later identified as a Mosasaur) are found in a quarry near Maastricht in the Netherlands.
• 1795 - Georges Cuvier identifies the bones found in the Netherlands in 1770 as belonging to an extinct reptile.

[edit] Mathematics

• 1600s - Putumana Somayaji writes the "Paddhati", which presents a detailed discussion of various trigonometric series
• 1614 - John Napier discusses Napierian logarithms in Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio,
• 1617 - Henry Briggs discusses decimal logarithms in Logarithmorum Chilias Prima,
• 1618 - John Napier publishes the first references to e in a work on logarithms.
• 1619 - René Descartes discovers analytic geometry (Pierre de Fermat claimed that he also discovered it independently),
• 1619 - Johannes Kepler discovers two of the Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra.
• 1629 - Pierre de Fermat develops a rudimentary differential calculus,
• 1634 - Gilles de Roberval shows that the area under a cycloid is three times the area of its generating circle,
• 1637 - Pierre de Fermat claims to have proven Fermat's last theorem in his copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica,
• 1637 - First use of the term imaginary number by René Descartes, it was meant to be derogatory.
• 1654 - Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat create the theory of probability,
• 1655 - John Wallis writes Arithmetica Infinitorum,
• 1658 - Christopher Wren shows that the length of a cycloid is four times the diameter of its generating circle,
• 1665 - Isaac Newton works on the fundamental theorem of calculus and develops his version of infinitesimal calculus,
• 1668 - Nicholas Mercator and William Brouncker discover an infinite series for the logarithm while attempting to calculate the area under a hyperbolic segment,
• 1671 - James Gregory develops a series expansion for the inverse-tangent function (originally discovered by Madhava)
• 1673 - Gottfried Leibniz also develops his version of infinitesimal calculus,
• 1675 - Isaac Newton invents an algorithm for the computation of functional roots,
• 1680s - Gottfried Leibniz works on symbolic logic,
• 1691 - Gottfried Leibniz discovers the technique of separation of variables for ordinary differential equations,
• 1693 - Edmund Halley prepares the first mortality tables statistically relating death rate to age,
• 1696 - Guillaume de L'Hôpital states his rule for the computation of certain limits,
• 1696 - Jakob Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli solve brachistochrone problem, the first result in the calculus of variations,
• 1706 - John Machin develops a quickly converging inverse-tangent series for π and computes π to 100 decimal places,
• 1712 - Brook Taylor develops Taylor series,
• 1722 - Abraham De Moivre states De Moivre's theorem connecting trigonometric functions and complex numbers,
• 1724 - Abraham De Moivre studies mortality statistics and the foundation of the theory of annuities in Annuities on Lives,
• 1730 - James Stirling publishes The Differential Method,
• 1733 - Giovanni Gerolamo Saccheri studies what geometry would be like if Euclid's fifth postulate were false,
• 1733 - Abraham de Moivre introduces the normal distribution to approximate the binomial distribution in probability,
• 1734 - Leonhard Euler introduces the integrating factor technique for solving first-order ordinary differential equations,
• 1735 - Leonhard Euler solves the Basel problem, relating an infinite series to π,
• 1736 - Leonhard Euler solves the problem of the Seven bridges of Königsberg, in effect creating graph theory,
• 1739 - Leonhard Euler solves the general homogeneous linear ordinary differential equation with constant coefficients,
• 1742 - Christian Goldbach conjectures that every even number greater than two can be expressed as the sum of two primes, now known as Goldbach's conjecture,
• 1748 - Maria Gaetana Agnesi discusses analysis in Instituzioni Analitiche ad Uso della Gioventu Italiana,
• 1761 - Thomas Bayes proves Bayes' theorem,
• 1762 - Joseph Louis Lagrange discovers the divergence theorem,
• 1789 - Jurij Vega improves Machin's formula and computes π to 140 decimal places,
• 1794 - Jurij Vega publishes Thesaurus Logarithmorum Completus,
• 1796 - Carl Friedrich Gauss proves that the regular 17-gon can be constructed using only a compass and straightedge
• 1796 - Adrien-Marie Legendre conjectures the prime number theorem,
• 1797 - Caspar Wessel associates vectors with complex numbers and studies complex number operations in geometrical terms,
• 1799 - Carl Friedrich Gauss proves the fundamental theorem of algebra (every polynomial equation has a solution among the complex numbers),
• 1799 - Paolo Ruffini partially proves the Abel–Ruffini theorem that quintic or higher equations cannot be solved by a general formula,

[edit] Medicine

• 1603 - Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have valves which allow blood to flow only toward the heart
• 1628 - William Harvey explains that the vein-artery system is a continuous loop and that the heart works like a pump to push blood in a one-way circuit through the body, in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
• 1701 - Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox innoculations in Europe. They were widely practised in the east before then.
• 1747 - James Lind discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy
• 1763 - Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy
• 1785 - William Withering publishes "An Account of the Foxglove" the first systematic description of digitalis in treating dropsy
• 1790s - Samuel Hahnemann rages against the prevalent practice of bloodletting as a universal cure and founds homeopathy
• 1796 - Edward Jenner develops a smallpox vaccination method

[edit] Notes

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2. ^ Asarnow, Herman (2005-08-08). Sir Francis Bacon: Empiricism. An Image-Oriented Introduction to Backgrounds for English Renaissance Literature. University of Portland. Retrieved on 2007-02-22.
3. ^ Sedziwój, Michal. infopoland: Poland on the Web. University at Buffalo. Retrieved on 2007-02-22.
4. ^ Crosland, M.P. (1959). "The use of diagrams as chemical 'equations' in the lectures of William Cullen and Joseph Black." Annals of Science, Vol 15, No. 2, Jun.
5. ^ Piat, Clodius. René Descartes. Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. Retrieved on 2007-02-22.
6. ^ Johann Baptista van Helmont. History of Gas Chemistry. Center for Microscale Gas Chemistry, Creighton University (2005-09-25). Retrieved on 2007-02-23.
7. ^ ^{a b} Robert Boyle. Chemical Achievers: The Human Face of Chemical Sciences. Chemical Heritage Foundation (2005). Retrieved on 2007-02-22.
8. ^ Cooper, Alan (1999). Joseph Black. History of Glasgow University Chemistry Department. University of Glasgow Department of Chemistry. Retrieved on 2006-02-23.
9. ^ Partington, J.R. (1989). A Short History of Chemistry. Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-65977-1. 
10. ^ Joseph Priestley. Chemical Achievers: The Human Face of Chemical Sciences. Chemical Heritage Foundation (2005). Retrieved on 2007-02-22.
11. ^ Carl Wilhelm Scheele. History of Gas Chemistry. Center for Microscale Gas Chemistry, Creighton University (2005-09-11). Retrieved on 2007-02-23.
12. ^ ^{a b c} Weisstein, Eric W. (1996). Lavoisier, Antoine (1743-1794). Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography. Wolfram Research Products. Retrieved on 2007-02-23.
13. ^ Jacques Alexandre César Charles. Centennial of Flight. U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission (2001). Retrieved on 2007-02-23.
14. ^ Burns, Ralph A. (1999). Fundamentals of Chemistry. Prentice Hall, 32. ISBN 0023173513. 
15. ^ Proust, Joseph Louis (1754-1826). 100 Distinguished Chemists. European Association for Chemical and Molecular Science (2005). Retrieved on 2007-02-23.
16. ^ Inventor Alessandro Volta Biography. The Great Idea Finder. The Great Idea Finder (2005). Retrieved on 2007-02-23.