The year 1618 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Astronomy
- March 8 – May 15 – Johannes Kepler formulates the third law of planetary motion.1
- July 21 – Pluto (not known at this time) reaches an aphelion. It next comes to aphelion in 1866.
- Johann Baptist Cysat, Swiss Jesuit geometer and astronomer and one of Christoph Scheiner's pupils, becomes the first to study a comet through the telescope and gives the first description of the nucleus and coma of a comet.
- September 6–25 – The Great Comet of 1618 is visible to the naked eye. James I described it as "Venus with a firebrand in her arse".2
Biology
- Fortunio Liceti's De spontaneo Viventium Ortu supports the theory of spontaneous generation of organisms.
Medicine
- The College of Physicians of London publishes the Pharmacopœia Londinensis.3
Births
- April 2 – Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian physicist, discoverer of the diffraction of light (died 1663)
- Jeremiah Horrocks, English astronomer (died 1641)
Deaths
- June 6 – Sir James Lancaster, English navigator (born 1554)
- October 29 – Walter Ralegh, English explorer (born c. 1554)
- Luca Valerio, Italian mathematician (born 1553)
References
Miller, Arthur I. (2009). Deciphering the cosmic number: the strange friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. p. 80. ISBN 978-0-393-06532-9. Retrieved March 7, 2011. 978-0-393-06532-9 ↩
Ereira, Alan (2016). The Nine Lives of John Ogilby. Duckworth. p. xxi. ISBN 9780715652268. 9780715652268 ↩
Medicorum Collegij Londinensis. Pharmacopœia Londinensis in qua medicamenta antiqua et nova vsitatissima, sedulò collecta, accuratissimè examinata, quotidiana experientia confirmata describuntur. Opera Medicorum Collegij Londinensis. Ex serenissimi Regis mandato cum R.M. Priuilegio. Printed by Edwardus Griffin for Iohannis Marriot. See: "Treasures of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's collections: Pharmacopoeia Londinensis 1618 (The London Pharmacopoeia)". The Pharmaceutical Journal. 273. London: Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain: 299. August 28, 2004. ISSN 0031-6873. http://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/pj-online-the-society-treasures-of-the-royal-pharmaceutical-societys-collections/20012713.article ↩