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Christopher Columbus is born as is Amerigo Vespucci
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Georg Peurbach's New Theory of the Planets (1454) sought to reconcile geometric descriptive models for predicting planetary motions by employing homocentric (nested concentric) celestial spheres.
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Columbus discovers the "New World" .
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The initial appearance of the heliocentric theory of Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) is associated with the private circulation of a manuscript known as the Commentariolus (The Little Commentary) which was published many years later.
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Martin Luther, monk and a university professor, wrote a paper. Specifically, a list of 95 theses, or propositions, challenging the sale of indulgences in theory and practice. He nailed the document to the door of the Wittenberg Church, which was the usual place for posting public notices, and offered to debate the theses with any churchman.
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One of the most famous publications in natural philosophy was the anatomical book of Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), De fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body). It was arguably the most important anatomical texts of the century, at once criticizing the work of the ancients, principally Galen, which offering new illustrations based on first-hand observation and fresh dissections.
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Gabriele Falloppio (1523-1562) announces his discovery of the fallopian tubes in his Anatomical Observations.
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Galileo Galilei born at Pisa, Italy, February 16; Michelangelo Buonarroti dies at Florence, 18 February; William Shakespeare born in England, 23 April.
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In one of the major publications of the century, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican argues for a Copernican system; Galileo uses every tactic available to him, drawing on his telescopic findings, his new view of motion, and not a little rhetorical skill.
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In his first major publication, Isaac Newton (in the Philosophical Transactions) established by means of experiment that white light was not one and pure, but rather that white light was mixed and heterogeneous: white light, against tradition, was in fact composed of a spectrum of colors (the rainbow) and each color is the result of a measurable angle of bending (refraction). Color as a quality was, according to tradition, a quantifiable degree of refrangibility.
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Newton's health fails, he collapses and borders on death; shortly thereafter, Newton dies at Kensington between 1.00 and 2.00am. On 28 March his body lays in state in Westminster Abbey where he is buried on 4 April.
