Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/August 17

August 17:

• 1601 - Birth of Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician (d. 1665)

• 1673 - Death of Regnier de Graaf, Dutch physician and anatomist (b. 1641)

• 1863 - Birth of Gene Stratton-Porter, American author and naturalist (d. 1924)

• 1969 - Death of Otto Stern, German physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1888)

• 1970 - Venera Program: Venera 7 launched. It will later become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus)

• 1993 - Death of Feng Kang, Chinese mathematician (b. 1920)

• 2004 - MD5 collision found by Chinese researchers

• 2005 - Death of John Bahcall, American astrophysicist (b. 1934)