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Astronomy

• Summer – The Royal Greenwich Observatory, designed by Christopher Wren, is completed near London.¹
• December 7 – Danish astronomer Ole Rømer measures the speed of light by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons, obtaining a speed of 140,000 miles per second (approximately 25% too slow).
• Edmond Halley arrives on the island of Saint Helena, having left the University of Oxford, and sets up an astronomical observatory to catalogue stars from the Southern Hemisphere.

Biology

• Antony Van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria, observed with the microscope.²
• Francis Willughby's Ornithologiae is published by John Ray, the foundation of scientific ornithology.³⁴⁵⁶

Medicine

• William Briggs publishes an anatomy of the eye (the first in England), Ophthalmographia, at Cambridge.⁷
• Thomas Sydenham publishes the textbook Observationes mediciae, the enlarged 3rd edition of his Methodus curandi febres.

Paleontology

• The first fossilised bone of what is now known to be a dinosaur is discovered in England by Robert Plot, the femur of a Megalosaurus from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.⁸

Physics

• Robert Hooke first reveals Hooke's law as a Latin anagram.⁹

Technology

• July 7 – The first clocks using a form of deadbeat escapement, constructed by Thomas Tompion to a design by Richard Towneley, are installed at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

Births

• May 28 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (died 1754)
• Caleb Threlkeld, Irish botanist (died 1728)
• Maria Clara Eimmart, German astronomer, engraver and designer (died 1707)

Deaths

• May 25 – Johann Rahn, Swiss mathematician (born 1622)
• September 4 – John Ogilby, English cartographer (born 1600)

References

1. Chambers, R. (1878). The Book of Days. /wiki/Robert_Chambers_(publisher_born_1802) ↩

2. "How bacteria was discovered by the father of microbiology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek". India Today. September 17, 2018. Retrieved 2021-08-30. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/bacteria-discovery-by-antonie-van-leeuwenhoek-1341671-2018-09-17 ↩

3. Egerton, Frank N. (October 2005). "A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 18: John Ray and His Associates Francis Willughby and William Derham" (PDF). Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 86 (4): 301–313. doi:10.1890/0012-9623(2005)86[301:ahotes]2.0.co;2. Retrieved 2011-04-26. http://www.esapubs.org/bulletin/current/history_list/history18.pdf ↩

4. Keynes, Sir Geoffrey (1976). John Ray, 1627–1705: a bibliography 1660–1970. Amsterdam: Van Heusden. p. 52. /wiki/Geoffrey_Keynes ↩

5. Raven, Charles E. (1942). John Ray, naturalist: his life and works. Cambridge University Press. /wiki/Charles_E._Raven ↩

6. Newton, Alfred (1893). Dictionary of Birds. London: Black. /wiki/Alfred_Newton ↩

7. Kaplan, Barbara Beigun (2004). "Briggs, William (c.1650–1704)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3413. Retrieved 2011-10-10. (subscription or UK public library membership required) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3413 ↩

8. Sarjeant, William A.S. (1997). "The earliest discoveries". In Farlow, James O.; Brett-Surman, Michael K. (eds.). The Complete Dinosaur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 3–11. ISBN 0-253-33349-0. 0-253-33349-0 ↩

9. The anagram is given in alphabetical order, ceiiinosssttuv, representing Ut tensio, sic vis – "As the extension, so the force": Petroski, Henry (1996). Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0674463684. 978-0674463684 ↩