Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/April 4

April 4:

• 1581 - Francis Drake completes a circumnavigation of the world and is knighted by Elizabeth I

• 1609 - Death of Charles de L'Ecluse, Flemish botanist (b. 1526)

• 1617 - Death of John Napier, Scottish mathematician (b. 1550)

• 1688 - Birth of Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, French astronomer (d. 1768)

• 1807 - Death of Joseph Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande, French astronomer (b. 1732)

• 1842 - Birth of Édouard Lucas, French mathematician (d. 1891)

• 1870 - Death of Heinrich Gustav Magnus, German chemist and physicist (b. 1802)

• 1879 - Death of Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, German physicist (b. 1803)

• 1890 - Death of Edmond Hébert, French geologist (b. 1812)

• 1919 - Death of William Crookes, English chemist and physicist (b. 1832)

• 1923 - Death of John Venn, British mathematician (b. 1834)

• 1932 - Death of Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1853)

• 1949 - Birth of Shing-Tung Yau, Chinese mathematician

• 1961 - Death of Simion Stoilow, Romanian mathematician (b. 1873)

• 1996 - Comet Hyakutake was imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous