Science & Discovery in the 17th century

145 sourced entries, 1600 CE to 1699 CE, oldest first. Also see Science & Discovery across every century or everything else in the 17th century.

• 1600William Gilbert publishes in Latin De Magnete, one of the first significant scientific books published in England, describing the Earth's magnetic field, and the beginning of modern geomagnetism. The adjective electrus (meaning “amber-like“ from the Greek elektron) was crafted by him. That's the inception of the “modern“ theory of electricity (from that adjective).source
• 1603Johann Bayer publishes the star atlas Uranometria, the first to cover the entire celestial sphere.source
• 1604October 9 – Kepler's Supernova (SN 1604) is first observed from the northern parts of the Italian Peninsula. Beginning on October 17, Johannes Kepler begins a year's observation of it from Prague. There won't be another supernova visible to the "naked-eye" until 1987. , this is the last supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.source
• 1604First publication of Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, in London.source
• 1607October 27 – Halley's Comet is seen by Johannes Kepler.source
• 1608October 2 – Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey demonstrates the first telescope in the Dutch Parliament.source
• 1609August 15 (August 5 O.S.) – English astronomer Thomas Harriot becomes the first person to make a detailed drawing of the Moon, based on his observations through a telescope.source
• 1609August 25 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian officials.source
• 1609Cornelis Drebbel invents the thermostat.source
• 1609Johannes Kepler publishes his first two laws of planetary motion in Astronomia nova.source
• 1610January 7 – Galileo Galilei first observes the four Galilean moons of Jupiter: Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Io, but is unable to distinguish the latter two until the following day.source
• 1610March 13 – Galileo Galilei's treatise on astronomy, Sidereus Nuncius, the first printed scientific record of observations through a telescope, is first published.source
• 1610November 26 – French astronomers Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Joseph Gaultier make the first detailed observations of the Orion Nebula.source
• 1610December 18 – (December 8 O.S.) English astronomer Thomas Harriot becomes the first person on Earth to observe sunspots through a telescope.source
• 1610Jakob Böhme experiences another inner vision, in which he believes that he further understands the unity of the cosmos, and that he has received a special vocation from God.source
• 1611February 27 – Sunspots are observed by telescope, by Frisian astronomers Johannes Fabricius and David Fabricius. Johannes publishes the results of these observations, in De Maculis in Sole observatis in Wittenberg, later this year. Such early discoveries are overlooked, however, and the first sighting is claimed a few months later, by Galileo Galilei and Christoph Scheiner.source
• 1611At Jamestown, John Rolfe imports tobacco seeds from the island of Trinidad (Nicotiana tabacum); the native tobacco is Nicotiana rustica.source
• 1612December 15 – Simon Marius becomes the first person on Earth to observe the Andromeda Galaxy through a telescope.source
• 1612December 28 – Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune when in conjunction with Jupiter. He mistakenly catalogues it as a fixed star, because of its extremely slow motion along the ecliptic. Neptune will not be truly recognized as a planet until 1846, about 234 years later, when Johann Gottfried Galle first sights it in the Berlin Observatory.source
• 1614Astronomer Johannes Kepler soon begins to employ logarithms, in his description of the Solar System.source
• 1614Scottish mathematician John Napier publishes Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithms), outlining his discovery of logarithms, and incorporating the decimal mark.source
• 1615Manuel Dias, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, introduces the telescope for the first time in China, in his book Tian Wen Lüe (Explicatio Sphaerae Coelestis).source
• 1615Johannes Kepler publishes Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, in response to Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's moons.source
• 1616February 24 – A commission of Roman Catholic theologians, the "Qualifiers," reports that the idea that the Sun is stationary is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture...".source
• 1616February 26 – Astronomer Galileo Galilei appears before Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino and "warned of the error of the Copernican opinion taught by him", and enjoined by the Catholic Church against any attempt to hold, teach or defend the position of Copernicus that the Sun is stationary rather than revolving around the Earth "in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing."source
• 1616René Descartes, at age 20, graduates in civil and canon law at the University of Poitiers, where he becomes disillusioned with books, preferring to seek truths from "le grand livre du monde." His thesis defense may be written in December.source
• 1616William Harvey gives his views on the circulation of blood, as Lumleian Lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians. It is not until 1628 that he gives his views in print.source
• 1616Italian naturalist Fabio Colonna states that "tongue stones" (glossopetrae) are shark teeth, in his treatise De glossopetris dissertatio.source
• 1616Richard Steel and John Crowther complete their journey from Ajmeer in the Mughal Empire to Ispahan in Persia.source
• 1616Ngawang Namgyal arrives in Bhutan, having escaped Tibet.source
• 1616Fortunio Liceti publishes De Monstruorum Natura in Italy, which marks the beginning of studies into malformations of the embryo.source
• 1616Tommaso Campanella's book In Defence of Galileo is written.source
• 1616English mathematician Henry Briggs goes to Edinburgh, to show John Napier his efficient method of finding logarithms, by the continued extraction of square roots.source
• 1616Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner becomes the advisor to Archduke Maximilian, brother of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna. A lifelong enemy of Galileo, following a dispute over the nature of sunspots, Scheiner is credited with reopening the 1616 accusations against Galileo in 1633.source
• 1618March 8 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion (after some initial calculations, he soon rejects the idea, but on May 15 confirms the discovery).source
• 1618July 20 – Pluto reaches its second most recent aphelion, according to sophisticated mathematical calculations. The next one occurs in 1866, and the following one will occur in 2113.source
• 1618September 18 – Beginning of the 13th Baktun, in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar (12.0.0.0.0).source
• 1619November 10 – While stationed along the Danube river with Bavarian troops, René Descartes, according to his biographer Adrien Baillet, has a series of dreams giving him the idea of applying the mathematical method to philosophy.source
• 1620January 7 – Ben Jonson's play News from the New World Discovered in the Moon is given its first performance, a presentation to King James VI and I. In addition to dialogue about actual observations made by telescope of the Moon, the play includes a fanciful discussion of a lunar civilisation, featuring a dance by the "Volatees", the lunar race.source
• 1620Francis Bacon publishes the Novum Organum (beyond Aristotle's Organon) on logical thinking. 1.source
• 1621December – The Dutch mathematician and astronomer, Willebrord Snel van Royen (1580–1626), reveals he has rediscovered the law of refraction, also known as Snellius' law.source
• 1623July 16 – A great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, with the planets only 5 arc minutes apart, the closest between 1226 and 2874. This conjunction likely goes unobserved, as it occurs near the Sun and the telescope has been invented only recently.source
• 1624Henry Briggs publishes Arithmetica Logarithmica.source
• 1624Jakob Bartsch first publishes a chart, showing the constellation Camelopardalis around the North Star.source
• 1628William Harvey publishes Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus in Frankfurt, containing his findings about blood circulation.source
• 1630May 17 – Italian astronomers Niccolò Zucchi and Daniello Bartoli become the first scientists to observe the belts on the planet Jupiter.source
• 1633July 8 – The Javanese calendar is commenced on this day by the order of Sultan Agung of the Mataram Sultanate. It is the Javanese adaptation of the Hijri calendar, but it continues the year numbering of the Shaka era widely used in Java then, thus the calendar's epoch is 1 Sura 1555 AJ, corresponding with 1 Muharram 1043 AH.source
• 1637Pierre de Fermat makes a notation, in a document margin, claiming to have proof of what will become known as Fermat's Last Theorem.source
• 1637René Descartes promotes intellectual rigour in his Discourse on the Method, and introduces the Cartesian coordinate system in its appendix La Géométrie (published in Leiden).source
• 1638December 21 – The full moon is in total eclipse from 1:12 to 2:47 UT, and the solstice occurs later in the day, at 16:05 UT.source
• 1639December 4 – English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks makes the first successful prediction and observation of a transit of Venus.source
• 1641René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is originally published.source
• 1643Roger Williams, co-founder of Rhode Island, publishes A Key into the Language of America.source
• 1643Evangelista Torricelli invents the mercury barometer.source
• 1644February 5 – The first livestock branding law in America is passed in Connecticut.source
• 1644Philosopher René Descartes publishes Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy) in Amsterdam.source
• 1650July 13 – Italian priest and astronomer Gerolamo Sersale of Naples takes advantage of a full moon and draws an extremely detailed lunar map, which is then engraved and reproduced for other astronomers.source
• 1650Three-wheeled wheelchairs are invented in Nuremberg by watchmaker Stephan Farffler.source
• 1652March 29 (April 8 New Style) – Total solar eclipse of April 8, 1652 ("Black Monday").source
• 1654November 23 – French mathematician, scientist and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal experiences an intense mystical vision that marks him for life.source
• 1655March 25 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.source
• 1656December 25 – The pendulum clock is invented by Christiaan Huygens, so accurate that it only loses 10 seconds per day. Huygens will mention the date in a letter to Ismail Boulliau a year later.source
• 1657Christiaan Huygens writes the first book to be published on probability theory, De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ("On Reasoning in Games of Chance").source
• 1658May 1 – Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus are published by Thomas Browne in England.source
• 1659July – Christiaan Huygens's important work on astronomy, Systema Saturnium, is published.source
• 1659Thomas Hobbes publishes De Homine.source
• 1662October 19 – An English Buccaneer force led by Royal Navy commodore Christopher Myngs launches an attack on Santiago de Cuba.source
• 1662c. January – John Graunt, in one of the earliest uses of statistics, publishes statistical information about births and deaths in London.source
• 1662Joan Blaeu publishes Atlas Maior, sive cosmographia Blaviana in Amsterdam (first complete edition, 11 volumes in Latin).source
• 1662Robert Boyle publishes Nova experimenta physico-mechanica in Oxford (2nd edition), setting forth the law bearing his name.source
• 1663Robert Hooke discovers that cork is made of "tiny little rooms", which he first calls "Cells".source
• 1663Baruch Spinoza publishes Principia philosophiae cartesianae, which is the only book he would publish under his name, in his life.source
• 1664March 19 – Polish astronomer Jan Heweliusz becomes the first native of Poland to be inducted into England's Royal Society.source
• 1664May 9 – Robert Hooke discovers Jupiter's Great Red Spot.source
• 1665January 5 – The Journal des sçavans begins publication as the first scientific journal in France.source
• 1665March 6 – The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London begins publication in England, the first scientific journal in English and the oldest to be continuously published.source
• 1666Isaac Newton uses a prism to split sunlight, as referenced in his alchemical works as Lux Dei, into the component colours of the optical spectrum, assisting the understanding of the scientific nature of light. He also develops differential calculus simultaneously with Leibniz. 1666 is consequently referred to as his Annus mirabilis or Newton's "Year of the Morning Star".source
• 1667Isaac Newton has investigated and written on optics, acoustics, the infinitesimal calculus, mechanism and thermodynamics. The works will be published only years later.source
• 1668English scientist Isaac Newton builds the first reflecting telescope (Newton's reflector).source
• 1669February 23 – Isaac Newton writes his first description of his new invention, the reflecting telescope.source
• 1669May 31 – Samuel Pepys stops writing his diary.source
• 1669Blaise Pascal's Pensées is posthumously published in Paris.source
• 1669Phosphorus is discovered by German alchemist Hennig Brand, the first chemical element to be discovered that was not known since ancient times.source
• 1669Jean Picard begins measurement of 1 degree of Earth's meridian arc in France.source
• 1671February 27 – The Ortenau meteorite lands in Germany.source
• 1671October 25 – Italian-born French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers Iapetus, the second known moon of the planet Saturn. Christiaan Huygens had discovered the Saturnian moon Titan on March 25, 1655.source
• 1672January 11 – The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, national science academy for England, elects Isaac Newton to its membership, and then demonstrates Newton's reflecting telescope to King Charles II.source
• 1672February 16 (February 6, 1671 O.S.) – Isaac Newton sends a paper for publication regarding his experiments on the refraction of light through glass prisms and makes the first identification of the "primary colors" of visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum, reporting that "The Original or primary colours are, Red, Yellow, Green, Blew, and a Violet-purple, together with Orange, Indico, and an indefinite variety of Intermediate gradations."source
• 1672December 23 – French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers Rhea, a previously-unknown satellite of the planet Saturn. Rhea is the second-largest overall, and the third moon of Saturn to be discovered by Earth astronomers, Titan having been found by Christiaan Huygens on March 25, 1655 and Iapetus by Cassini on October 25, 1671.source
• 1675February 25 – Netherlands scientist Christiaan Huygens files drawings of his invention of the balance spring, the key component to the accuracy of portable clocks and pocket watches, in a letter to the Journal des Sçavants.source
• 1675March 4 – John Flamsteed is appointed by King Charles II as England's "astronomical observator", in effect, becoming the first Astronomer Royal.source
• 1675August 10 – King Charles II of England places the foundation stone of the Royal Greenwich Observatory near London; construction begins.source
• 1675October 29 – Gottfried Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.source
• 1675November 11 – Gottfried Leibniz makes the earliest known use of infinitesimal calculus in the breaking down of a function.source
• 1675Antonie van Leeuwenhoek begins to use a microscope for observing human tissues and liquids.source
• 1675Giovanni Cassini discovers the Cassini Division in the rings of Saturn.source
• 1676December 7 – Ole Rømer makes the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.source
• 1676Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers microorganisms.source
• 1677Antonie van Leeuwenhoek observes spermatozoa under the microscope.source
• 1677Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz gives a complete solution to the tangent problem.source
• 1677Robert Plot publishes The Natural History of Oxford-shire, Being an Essay Toward the Natural History of England, in which he describes the fossilised femur of a human giant, now known to be from the dinosaur Megalosaurus.source
• 1678March 28 – The nova V529 Orionis is discovered by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius (Jan Heweliusz).source
• 1680September 30 – Robert Boyle, having rediscovered the process of manufacturing phosphorus from bone ash, deposits his summary of the directions with The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Boyle's assistant, Ambrose Godfrey, later develops Boyle's discovery to produce phosphorus commercially.source
• 1680November 14 – The Great Comet of 1680 is first sighted by Gottfried Kirch, the first comet discovered by telescope.source
• 1682August 23 – A comet that will later become known as Comet Halley, is observed from several locations on Earth after reaching magnitude 2 and becoming visible to the naked eye. Arthur Storer sees it from the North American colony of Maryland, while German astronomer Johannes Hevelius measures it from Danzig (now Gdansk in Poland). Edmond Halley successfully predicts that it will return in 1758.source
• 1684January – Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. Hooke's claim is that in a letter to Newton on 6 January 1680, he first stated the inverse-square law.source
• 1684March 19 – In Japan, the Tenna era ends on the 21st day of the 2nd month of the Chinese calendar of the 4th year of the Tenna era and the Jōkyō era begins as Japan's royal astronomer, Shibukawa Shunkai institutes the Jōkyō calendar to replace Chinese calendar which had been used in Japan since 859 AD, after calculating that the length of the solar year is 365.2417 days.source
• 1684August – Edmond Halley goes to Cambridge to discuss the problem of planetary motion with Isaac Newton.source
• 1684December 10 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.source
• 1684John Bunyan publishes the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress.source
• 1685June 16 – A lunar eclipse is observed in the evening by François-Timoléon de Choisy, amongst others, onboard his ship in the vicinity of Madagascar. The ship was at a latitude of 37 degrees 40 minutes, and the eclipse was not visible from Europe.source
• 1686English historian and naturalist Robert Plot publishes The Natural History of Staffordshire, a collection of illustrations and texts detailing the history of the county. It is the first document known to mention crop circles and a double sunset.source
• 1687November 5 – An annular solar eclipse is visible from Arabia across the Indian Ocean and across the south of Australiasource
• 1688February 7 – Six French Jesuit scientists, Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Gerbillon, Louis-Daniel Lecomte, Guy Tachard, Claude de Visdelou and the leader, Jean de Fontaney, arrive in Beijing and are welcomed by the Emperor of China, Kangxi.source
• 1688The earliest known mention of the balalaika is made.source
• 1689April 4 – A total lunar eclipse is visible in central Asia.source
• 1689September 28–29 – A total lunar eclipse is visible in eastern America, western Europe and west Africa.source
• 1689December 10 – A great comet is visible from Pekin and sightings continue until December 24th, including many from Dutch ships near the equator.source
• 1690March 10 – An annular solar eclipse is visible across the south of the Pacific Ocean.source
• 1690December 13 – The planet Uranus is first sighted and recorded, by England's first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, who mistakenly catalogs it as a star 34 Tauri.source
• 1690Giovanni Domenico Cassini observes differential rotation within Jupiter's atmosphere.source
• 1691February 28 – An annular solar eclipse is visible across the Philippines, North Borneo and eastern Sumatra.source
• 1691August 23 – A total solar eclipse is visible across South America, Central America and Mexico.source
• 1691Michel Rolle invents Rolle's theorem, which states that any real-valued differentiable function that attains equal values at two distinct points must have at least one stationary point somewhere between them.source
• 1692February 17 – An annular solar eclipse is visible across Russia, western Mongolia, Xinjiang, Iran, Afghanistan and Iran.source
• 1692August 12 – A total solar eclipse is visible in the South Atlantic Ocean.source
• 1692December 24 – The French ship Soleil Royal, a three-decker First Rank ship with 104 guns, is launched at Brest Dockyard.source
• 1693January 22 – A total lunar eclipse is visible across North and South America.source
• 1693July 17 – A total lunar eclipse is visible in New Zealand and across the Pacific Ocean.source
• 1693English astronomer Edmond Halley studies records of births and deaths in Breslau (Poland), producing a life table consolidating year of birth and age at death. He uses this to work out the price of life annuities.source
• 1693Italian barber Giovanni Paolo Feminis creates a perfume water called Aqua Admirabilis, earliest known form of eau de Cologne.source
• 1694January 29 – French missionary Jean-Baptiste Labat arrives in the New World, landing at the Caribbean island of Martinique.source
• 1694June 22 – An annular solar eclipse is visible across North America and the Atlantic Ocean.source
• 1694December 16 – A total solar eclipse is visible across South America.source
• 1695June 11 – An annular eclipse of the sun is visible across South America.source
• 1696May 1 – A partial solar eclipse is visible in western Canada and Greenland.source
• 1696May 16 – A total lunar eclipse is visible in western Europe and Africa.source
• 1696November 9 – A total lunar eclipse is visible in North and South America.source
• 1697January 11 – French writer Charles Perrault releases the book Histoires ou contes du temps passé (literally "Tales of Past Times", known in England as "Mother Goose tales") in Paris, a collection of popular fairy tales, including Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Red Riding Hood, The Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard.source
• 1698April 10 – A total solar eclipse is visible in Central America.source
• 1698May 17 – The British Royal Navy ship HMS Hastings, a 32-gun fifth rate, is launched.source
• 1698November – Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kōchi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid meteor shower, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".source
• 1698Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.source
• 1699March 31 – A total solar eclipse is visible across the southern Indian Ocean.source
• 1699September 23 – A total solar eclipse is visible in the northern hemisphere across Europe, the Middle East and north India.source