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Jan 1, 1543
On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was decacated to Pope Paul III, to protect him from vilification. In the book Copernicus wrote about how the earth revoled around sun, the heliocentric theory, not the other way around like it was believed. -
Giordano Bruno Publishes The Ash-Wednesday Supper, On Cause, Principle, and Unity, and On the Infinite Universe and Its Worlds.
The renegade Italian monk unfolds his philosophy, the centerpiece of which is the contention that the universe is infinitely large and that the Earth is by no means at the center of it. For the expression of his thoughts, Bruno is burned at the stake as a heretic. -
Francois Viete Invents Analytical Trigonometry
Viete's invention is essential to the study of physics and astronomy. -
Galileo Galilei Demonstrates the Properties of Gravity
Galileo demonstrates, from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa, that a one- pound weight and a one hundred-pound weight, dropped at the same moment, hit the ground at the same moment -
Galileo Publishes Messenger of the Heavens
Galileo's 24-page booklet describes his telescopic observations of the moon's surface, and of Jupiter's moons, making the Church uneasy. -
John Napier Publishes Description of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms
Napier's invention and cataloguing of logarithms is an essential step in easing the task of numerical calculation. -
Francis Bacon Publishes Novum Organum
Bacon attempts to create organization and cooperation within the scientific community by demonstrating how the diverse fields of science relate to one another. -
Galileo is Forced to Recant his Theories
The Inquisition forces Galileo to sign a recantation and condemns him to house arrest for the remaining nine years of his life. His Dialogue is ordered burned as heretical, and his sentence to be read at every university. -
Rene Descartes Publishes Geometry
In this landmark work, Descartes discusses how motion may be represented as a curve along a graph, defined by its relation to planes of reference. -
Evangelista Torricelli Invents the Barometer
Torricelli's invention measures air pressure, demonstrating that air does indeed have weight, and that the pressure caused by that weight differs in different situations. -
Otto von Guericke Invents the Air Pump
Van Guerick demonstrates the properties of a vacuum by using his air pump to take the air from within his famous "Magdeberg hemispheres," which, though easily separated in normal conditions, could not be parted by two teams of sixteen horses once he had removed the air. -
Isaac Newton Publishes Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Perhaps the most important event in the history of science, the Principia lays out Newton's comprehensive model of the universe as organized according to the law of universal gravitation. The Principia represents the integration of the works of all of the great astronomers who preceded Newton, and remains the basis of modern physics and astronomy. -
Isaac Newton's death
Isaac Newton died of old age.
