Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/April 17

April 17:

• 1492 - Spain and Christopher Columbus sign a contract for him to sail to Asia to get spices

• 1598 - Birth of Giovanni Riccioli, Italian astronomer (d. 1671)

• 1761 - Death of Thomas Bayes, English mathematician

• 1794 - Birth of Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, German botanist (d. 1868)

• 1798 - Birth of Étienne Bobillier, French mathematician (d. 1840)

• 1863 - Birth of Augustus Edward Hough Love, English mathematician (d. 1940)

• 1942 - Death of Jean Perrin, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1870)

• 1976 - Death of Henrik Dam, Danish biochemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1895)

• 1994 - Death of Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, Nobel laureate (b. 1913)

• 1997 - Death of Piet Hein, Danish scientist and poet (b. 1905)