Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/March

Selected anniversaries in March

January • February • March • April • May • June • July • August • September • October • November • December

March 1:

• 1597 - Birth of Jean-Charles della Faille, Belgian mathematician (d. 1652)
• 1610 - Birth of John Pell, English mathematician (d. 1685)
• 1700 - Sweden introduces its own Swedish calendar, in an attempt to gradually merge into the Gregorian calendar, reverts to the Julian calendar on this date in 1712, and introduces the Gregorian calendar on this date in 1753
• 1862 - Death of Peter Barlow, English mathematician (b. 1776)
• 1884 - Death of Isaac Todhunter, English mathematician (b. 1820)
• 1910 - Birth of Archer John Porter Martin, English chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2002)
• 1911 - Death of Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
• 1928 - Birth of Seymour Papert, South African mathematician
• 1943 - Birth of Richard H. Price, American physicist
• 1943 - Birth of Rashid Sunyaev, Russian physicist
• 1966 - Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface
• 1966 - Death of Fritz Houtermans, German physicist (b. 1903)
• 1980 - Voyager 1 probe confirms that Janus (moon of Saturn) exists
• 1991 - Death of Edwin H. Land, American scientist and inventor (Polaroid Corporation) (b. 1909)
• 1995 - Death of Georges J. F. Köhler, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1946)

March 2:

• 1729 - Death of Francesco Bianchini, Italian philosopher and scientist (b. 1662)

• 1779 - Birth of Joel Roberts Poinsett, American statesman and botanist (d. 1851)

• 1791 - Long-distance communication speeds up with the unveiling of a semaphore machine in Paris

• 1808 - The inaugural meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, was held in Edinburgh

• 1840 - Death of Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer (b. 1758)

• 1862 - Birth of Boris Borisovich Galitzine, Russian physicist (d. 1916)

• 1962 - Death of Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin, Belgian mathematician (b. 1866)

• 1998 - Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice

March 3:

• 1703 - Death of Robert Hooke, English scientist (b. 1635)

• 1800 - Birth of Heinrich Georg Bronn, German geologist (d. 1862)

• 1845 - Birth of Georg Cantor, German mathematician (d. 1918)

• 1879 - The United States Geological Survey is created

• 1917 - Birth of Sameera Moussa, Egyptian nuclear scientist (d. 1952)

• 1988 - Death of Sewall Wright, American biologist (b. 1889)

• 1993 - Death of Albert Sabin, Polish-born medical researcher (b. 1906)

• 1999 - Death of Gerhard Herzberg, German-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)

March 4:

• 1493 - Explorer Christopher Columbus arrives back in Lisbon, Portugal aboard his ship Niña from his discovery voyage to America. He returned to Spain on March 15

• 1774 - First sighting of Orion Nebula by William Herschel

• 1792 - Birth of Samuel Slocum, American inventor (d. 1861)

• 1822 - Birth of Jules Antoine Lissajous, French mathematician (d. 1880)

• 1835 - Birth of John Hughlings Jackson, English neurologist (d. 1911)

• 1847 - Birth of Karl Bayer, Austrian chemist (d. 1904)

• 1853 - Death of Christian Leopold von Buch, German geologist (b. 1774)

• 1854 - Birth of Sir Napier Shaw, British meteorologist (d. 1945)

• 1859 - Birth of Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Russian physicist (d. 1905)

• 1862 - Birth of Jacob Robert Emden, Swiss astrophysicist and meteorologist (d. 1940)

• 1863 - Birth of Reginald Innes Pocock, British zoologist (d. 1947)

• 1871 - Birth of Boris Galerkin, Russian mathematician (d. 1945)

• 1881 - Birth of Richard C. Tolman, American mathematical physicist (d. 1948)

• 1887 - Gottlieb Daimler unveils his first automobile which he test runs in Esslingen and Cannstatt, Germany

• 1889 - Birth of Oscar Chisini, Italian mathematician (d. 1967)

• 1903 - Birth of William C. Boyd, American immunochemist (d. 1983)

• 1904 - Birth of George Gamow, Ukrainian-born physicist (d. 1968)

• 1910 - Death of Knut Ångström, Swedish physicist (b. 1857)

• 1914 - Birth of Robert R. Wilson, American physicist, sculptor and architect (d. 2000)

• 1923 - Birth of Sir Patrick Moore, British astronomer

• 1927 - Death of Ira Remsen American chemist (b. 1846)

• 1934 - Birth of Janez Strnad, Slovenian physicist

• 1952 - Death of Charles Scott Sherrington, English scientist, Nobel laureate (b. 1857)

• 1962 - United States Atomic Energy Commission announces that the first atomic power plant at McMurdo Station in Antarctica is in operation

• 1967 - Death of Michel Plancherel, Swiss mathematician (b. 1885)

• 1973 - Death of Samuel Tolansky, British scientist and expert on spectroscopy (b. 1907)

• 1976 - Death of Walter H. Schottky, German physicist (b. 1886)

• 1977 - The first Cray-1 supercomputer is shipped to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico

• 1997 - Death of Robert H. Dicke, American physicist (b. 1916)

• 2004 - Death of George Pake, American physicist (b. 1924)

• 2006 - Final contact attempt with Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network. No response was received

March 5:

• 1512 - Birth of Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer (d. 1594)
• 1575 - Birth of William Oughtred, English mathematician (d. 1660)
• 1739 - Birth of Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge, American physician and statesman (d. 1819)
• 1748 - Birth of Jonas C. Dryander, Swedish botanist (d. 1810)
• 1794 - Birth of Jacques Babinet, French physicist (d. 1872)
• 1827 - Death of Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician (b. 1749)
• 1827 - Death of Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist (b. 1745)
• 1904 - Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of the ball lightning formation
• 1915 - Birth of Laurent Schwartz, French mathematician (d. 2002)
• 1925 - Death of Johan Jensen, Danish mathematician (b. 1859)
• 1927 - Death of Franz Mertens, German mathematician (b. 1840)
• 1960 - The Aquatic ape hypothesis originates when Alister Hardy publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase
• 1979 - Detection equipment picks up a gamma-ray burst originating from the Large Magellanic Cloud, leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters

March 6:

• 1079 - Omar Khayyám completes the Iranian calendar

• 1716 - Birth of Pehr Kalm, Swedish explorer and naturalist (d. 1779)

• 1787 - Birth of Joseph von Fraunhofer, German physicist (d. 1826)

• 1866 - Death of William Whewell, English scientist, philosopher, and historian of science (b. 1794)

• 1869 - Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society

• 1939 - Death of Ferdinand von Lindemann, German mathematician (b. 1852)

• 2005 - Death of Hans Bethe, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)

March 7:

• 1625 - Death of Johann Bayer, German astronomer (b. 1572)

• 1765 - Birth of Nicéphore Niépce, French inventor of photography (d. 1833)

• 1788 - Birth of Antoine César Becquerel, French physicist (d. 1878)

• 1792 - Birth of John Herschel, English mathematician and astronomer (d. 1871)

• 1799 - The Royal Institution is founded

• 1837 - Birth of Henry Draper, American physician and astronomer (d. 1882)

• 1849 - Birth of Luther Burbank, American botanist (d. 1926)

• 1857 - Birth of Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Austrian neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1940)

• 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone (patent # 174,465)

• 1904 - Death of Ferdinand André Fouqué, French geologist (b. 1828)

• 1922 - Birth of Olga Ladyzhenskaya, Russian mathematician (d. 2004)

• 1926 - The first transatlantic telephone call was made from New York City to London

• 1938 - Birth of David Baltimore, American biologist, Nobel laureate

• 1954 - Death of Otto Diels, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1876)

• 1996 - The Hubble Space Telescope makes the first pictures of the surface of Pluto

• 1997 - Death of Edward Mills Purcell, Nobel laureate (b. 1912)

March 8:

• 1618 - Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion

• 1746 - Birth of André Michaux, French botanist (d. 1802)

• 1879 - Birth of Otto Hahn, German Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)

• 1886 - Birth of Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1972)

• 1914 - Birth of Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, Russian physicist (d. 1987)

• 1934 - A photograph by astronomer Edwin Hubble shows there are as many galaxies in the universe as there are stars in the Milky Way

• 1979 - The first extraterrestrial volcano is discovered on Io, a satellite of the planet Jupiter

• 1988 - Death of Werner Hartmann, German physicist (b. 1912)

• 2005 - Death of César Lattes, Brazilian physicist (b. 1924)

March 9:

• 1454 - Birth of Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer and cartographer (d. 1512)

• 1564 - Birth of David Fabricius, German astronomer (d. 1617)

• 1758 - Birth of Franz Joseph Gall, German neuroscientist (d. 1828)

• 1851 - Death of Hans Christian Ørsted, Danish physicist (b. 1777)

• 1887 - Birth of Fritz Lenz, German geneticist (d. 1976)

• 1923 - Birth of Walter Kohn, Austrian-born physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

• 1932 - The first Ford Flathead engine leaves the assembly line at Ford Motor Company

• 1954 - Death of Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer (b. 1912)

• 1954 - Death of V. Walfrid Ekman, Swedish oceanographer (b. 1874)

• 1975 - Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins

• 2006 - Liquid water is discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn

March 10:

• 1585 - Death of Rembert Dodoens, Flemish physician and botanist (b. 1517)

• 1670 - Death of Johann Rudolf Glauber, German chemist (b. 1604)

• 1709 - Birth of Georg Steller, German naturalist (d. 1746)

• 1769 - Birth of Joseph Williamson, English philanthropist and tunnel builder (d. 1840)

• 1801 - First census in Great Britain

• 1891 - Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patents the strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching

• 1923 - Birth of Val Logsdon Fitch, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1942 - Death of William Henry Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1862)

• 1966 - Death of Frits Zernike, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)

March 11:

• 1811 - Birth of Urbain Le Verrier, French mathematician (d. 1877)

• 1822 - Birth of Joseph Louis François Bertrand, French mathematician (d. 1900)

• 1870 - Birth of Louis Bachelier, French mathematician (d. 1946)

• 1897 - A meteorite enters the earth's atmosphere and explodes over New Martinsville, West Virginia. The debris causes damage but no human injuries are reported

• 1910 - Birth of Robert Havemann, German chemist (d. 1982)

• 1920 - Death of Julio Garavito Armero, Colombian astronomer (b. 1865)

• 1921 - Birth of Frank Harary, American mathematician (d. 2005)

• 1955 - Death of Alexander Fleming, Scottish scientist, Nobel laureate (b. 1881)

• 1977 - Death of Ulysses S. Grant IV, American geologist (b. 1893)

• 1996 - The EU Database Directive is passed

March 12:

• 1824 - Birth of Gustav Kirchhoff, German physicist (d. 1887)

• 1835 - Birth of Simon Newcomb, American astronomer and mathematician (d. 1909)

• 1838 - Birth of William Henry Perkin, English chemist (d. 1907)

• 1863 - Birth of Vladimir Vernadsky, Russian mineralogist (d. 1945)

• 1880 - Birth of Henry Drysdale Dakin, British-American biochemist, known for the Dakin-West reaction (d. 1952)

• 1907 - Birth of Dorrit Hoffleit, American astronomer (d. 2007)

• 1925 - Birth of Leo Esaki, Japanese physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1991 - Death of Ragnar Granit, Finnish neuroscientist, Nobel laureate (b. 1900)

March 13:

• 1720 - Birth of Charles Bonnet, Swiss naturalist and writer (d. 1793)

• 1733 - Birth of Joseph Priestley, English scientist and minister (d. 1804)

• 1773 - Death of Philibert Commerçon, French naturalist and explorer (b. 1727)

• 1781 - William Herschel discovers Uranus

• 1855 - Birth of Percival Lowell, American astronomer (d. 1916)

• 1899 - Birth of John Hasbrouck van Vleck, American physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1980)

• 1930 - The news of the discovery of Pluto is telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory

• 1945 - Birth of Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, Russian mathematician

• 2003 - Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy

March 14:

• 1835 - Birth of Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian astronomer (d. 1910)

• 1854 - Birth of Paul Ehrlich, German scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1915)

• 1862 - Birth of Vilhelm Bjerknes, Norwegian physicist (d. 1961)

• 1879 - Birth of Albert Einstein, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955)

• 1882 - Birth of Waclaw Sierpinski, Polish mathematician (d. 1969)

• 1995 - Death of William Alfred Fowler, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1911)

March 15:

• 1713 - Birth of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, French astronomer (d. 1762)

• 1790 - Birth of Ludwig Immanuel Magnus, German mathematician (d. 1861)

• 1813 - Birth of John Snow, English epidemiologist (d. 1858)

• 1821 - Birth of Eduard Heine, German mathematician (d. 1881)

• 1821 - Birth of Johann Josef Loschmidt, Austrian scientist (d. 1895)

• 1868 - Birth of Grace Chisholm Young, English mathematician (d. 1944)

• 1890 - Birth of Boris Nikolaevich Delaunay, Russian mathematician (d. 1980)

• 1898 - Death of Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist (b. 1813)

• 1930 - Birth of Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1951 - Death of John S. Paraskevopoulos, Greek-born astronomer (b. 1889)

• 1962 - Death of Arthur Compton, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1892)

• 1985 - The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com)

• 2004 - Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar System so far observed

• 2004 - Death of Sir William Pickering, New Zealand-born space scientist (b. 1910)

• 2004 - Death of John Pople, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1925)

March 16:

• 1750 - Birth of Caroline Herschel, German-born English astronomer (d. 1848)

• 1789 - Birth of Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist (d. 1854)

• 1794 - Birth of Ami Boué, Austrian geologist (d. 1881)

• 1846 - Birth of Gösta Mittag-Leffler, Swedish mathematician (d. 1927)

• 1851 - Birth of Martinus Beijerinck, Dutch microbiologist and botanist (d. 1931)

• 1867 - First publication of an article by Joseph Lister outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery, in The Lancet

• 1905 - Birth of Marlin Perkins, American naturalist (d. 1986)

• 1918 - Birth of Frederick Reines, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998)

• 1925 - Birth of Luis E. Miramontes, Mexican chemist, co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive pill (d. 2004)

• 1926 - History of Rocketry: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts

• 1992 - Death of Yves Rocard, French physicist (b. 1903)

• 1998 - Death of Derek Harold Richard Barton, British chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1918)

March 17:

• 1764 - Death of George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, English astronomer

• 1782 - Death of Daniel Bernoulli, Dutch-born mathematician (b. 1700)

• 1845 - The rubber band is patented

• 1846 - Death of Friedrich Bessel, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1784)

• 1853 - Death of Christian Doppler, Austrian physician and mathematician (b. 1803)

• 1870 - Birth of Horace Donisthorpe, British entomologist (d. 1951)

• 1931 - Birth of David Peakall, British scientist (d. 2001)

• 1932 - Birth of Donald N. Langenberg, American physicist

• 1956 - Death of Irene Joliot-Curie, French physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1897)

• 2003 - Death of Su Buqing, Chinese mathematician and educator (b. 1902)

March 18:

• 1602 - Birth of Jacques de Billy, French mathematician (d. 1679)
• 1640 - Birth of Philippe de La Hire, French mathematician and astronomer (d. 1719)
• 1690 - Birth of Christian Goldbach, Prussian mathematician (d. 1764)
• 1781 - Charles Messier rediscovers globular cluster M92 - 'M' stands for Messier Object
• 1871 - Death of Augustus De Morgan, Indian-born British mathematician and logician (b. 1806)
• 1905 - Birth of Thomas Townsend Brown, American scientist (d. 1985)
• 1907 - Birth of John Zachary Young, British biologist (d. 1997)
• 1907 - Death of Marcellin Berthelot, French chemist and politician (b. 1827)
• 1935 - Birth of Ole Barndorff-Nielsen, Danish mathematician
• 1965 - Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space

March 19:

• 1865 - Birth of William Morton Wheeler, American entomologist, myrmecologist, pioneer in ethology (d. 1937)

• 1871 - Death of Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger, Austrian mineralogist (b. 1795)

• 1883 - Birth of Walter Haworth, British chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1950)

• 1897 - Death of Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie, French geographer (b. 1810)

• 1900 - Birth of Frédéric Joliot, French physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1958)

• 1914 - Birth of Leonidas Alaoglu, Greek-Canadian mathematician (d. 1981)

• 1914 - Death of Giuseppe Mercalli, Italian volcanologist (b. 1850)

• 1915 - Pluto is photographed for the first time but is not recognized as a planet

• 1942 - Death of Clinton Hart Merriam, American zoologist (b. 1855)

• 1943 - Birth of Mario J. Molina, Mexican chemist, Nobel laureate

• 1950 - Death of Walter Haworth, British chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1883)

• 1987 - Death of Louis, 7th duc de Broglie, French physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1892)

• 2008 - GRB 080319B: A cosmic burst that is the farthest object visible to the naked eye was briefly observed on this day

March 20:

• 1735 - Birth of Torbern Bergman, Swedish chemist (d. 1784)

• 1878 - Death of Julius Robert von Mayer, German physician and physicist (b. 1814)

• 1879 - Birth of Maud Menten, Canadian biochemist (d. 1960)

• 1899 - Death of Franz Ritter von Hauer, Austrian geologist (b. 1822)

• 1916 - Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity

• 1933 - Birth of Alexander Gorodnitsky, Russian geologist and poet

• 1938 - Birth of Sergei Novikov, Russian mathematician, Fields Medalist

• 1940 - Death of Alfred Ploetz, German physician, biologist, and eugenicist (b. 1860)

• 1983 - Death of Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov, Russian mathematician (b. 1891)

• 1993 - Death of Polykarp Kusch, German-born American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1911)

March 21:

• 1762 - Death of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, French astronomer (b. 1713)

• 1768 - Birth of Joseph Fourier, French mathematician (d. 1830)

• 1772 - Death of Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, French cartographer (b. 1703)

• 1795 - Death of Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist (b. 1714)

• 1844 - The Baháʼí calendar begins. This is the first day of the first year of the Baháʼí calendar. It is annually celebrated by members of the Baháʼí Faith as the Baháʼí New Year or Náw-Rúz

• 1859 - Zoological Society of Philadelphia, 1st in US, incorporated

• 1932 - Birth of Walter Gilbert, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1980 - Death of Peter Stoner, American mathematician, astronomer and Christian apologist (b. 1888)

March 22:

• 1868 - Birth of Robert Millikan, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)

• 1840 - Death of Étienne Bobillier, French mathematician (b. 1798)

• 1895 - First display (a private screening) of motion pictures by Auguste and Louis Lumière

• 1931 - Birth of Burton Richter, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1941 - Washington's Grand Coulee Dam begins to generate electricity

March 23:

• 1606 - Death of Justus Lipsius, Flemish humanist (b. 1547)

• 1638 - Birth of Frederik Ruysch, Dutch physician and anatomist (d. 1731)

• 1749 - Birth of Pierre Simon de Laplace, French mathematician and astronomer (d. 1827)

• 1754 - Birth of Baron Jurij Vega, Slovenian mathematician, physicist, and artillery officer (d. 1802)

• 1769 - Birth of William Smith, English geologist and cartographer (d. 1839)

• 1881 - Birth of Hermann Staudinger, German chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1965)

• 1882 - Birth of Emmy Noether, German mathematician (d. 1935)

• 1903 - The Wright Brothers apply for a patent on their invention of one of the first successful airplanes

• 1907 - Birth of Daniel Bovet, Swiss-born scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1992)

• 1912 - Birth of Wernher von Braun, German-born physicist and engineer (d. 1977)

• 1934 - Birth of Ludvig Faddeev, Russian mathematician

• 1982 - Death of Barney Clark, first artificial heart recipient (b. 1921)

• 2007 - Death of Paul J. Cohen, American mathematician, Fields Medal winner (b. 1934)

March 24:

• 1494 - Birth of Georg Agricola, German scientist (d. 1555)

• 1809 - Birth of Joseph Liouville, French mathematician (d. 1882)

• 1820 - Birth of A. E. Becquerel, French physicist (d. 1891)

• 1835 - Birth of Jožef Stefan, Slovenian physicist (d. 1893)

• 1881 - Death of Joseph Delesse, French geologist (b. 1817)

• 1884 - Birth of Peter Debye, Dutch chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1966)

• 1891 - Birth of Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, Soviet physicist (d. 1951)

• 1893 - Birth of Walter Baade, German astronomer (d. 1960)

• 1903 - Birth of Adolf Butenandt, German chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1995)

• 1915 - Death of Karol Olszewski, Polish scientist (b. 1846)

• 1917 - Birth of John Kendrew, British molecular biologist, Nobel laureate (d. 1997)

• 1962 - Death of Auguste Piccard, Swiss physicist and explorer (b. 1884)

• 1965 - NASA spacecraft Ranger 9, equipped to convert its signals into a form suitable for showing on domestic television, brings images of the Moon into ordinary homes before crash landing

• 2002 - Death of César Milstein, Argentine scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1927)

March 25:

• 1539 - Birth of Christopher Clavius, German mathematician (d. 1612)

• 1561 - Death of Conrad Lycosthenes, French-born German philosopher and encyclopedist (b. 1518)

• 1655 - Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens

• 1712 - Death of Nehemiah Grew, English naturalist (b. 1641)

• 1800 - Birth of Heinrich von Dechsen, German geologist (d. 1889)

• 1818 - Death of Caspar Wessel, Danish mathematician (b. 1745)

• 1946 - Birth of Maurice Krafft, French vulcanologist (d. 1991)

• 1952 - Birth of Antanas Mockus, Colombian mathematician

March 26:

• 1516 - Birth of Conrad Gessner, Swiss naturalist (d. 1565)

• 1535 - Death of Georg Tannstetter, Austrian scientist (b. 1482)

• 1679 - Death of Johannes Schefferus, Alsatian-born humanist (b. 1621)

• 1698 - Birth of Václav Prokop Diviš, Czech theologian and natural scientist (d. 1765)

• 1753 - Birth of Benjamin Thompson, American physicist and inventor (d. 1814)

• 1773 - Birth of Nathaniel Bowditch, American mathematician and navigation expert (d. 1838)

• 1797 - Death of James Hutton, Scottish geologist (b. 1726)

• 1859 - Birth of Adolf Hurwitz, German mathematician (d. 1919)

• 1875 - Birth of Max Abraham, German physicist (d. 1922)

• 1910 - Death of Auguste Charlois, French astronomer (b. 1864)

• 1911 - Birth of Bernard Katz, German-born biophysicist, Nobel laureate (d. 2003)

• 1913 - Birth of Paul Erdős, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1996)

• 1916 - Birth of Christian B. Anfinsen, American chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1995)

• 1922 - Birth of Oscar Sala, Italian-born physicist

• 1938 - Birth of Anthony James Leggett, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1941 - Birth of Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist

• 1951 - Birth of Carl Wieman, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1953 - Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine

March 27:

• 1817 - Birth of Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli, Swiss biologist (d. 1891)

• 1845 - Birth of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1923)

• 1847 - Birth of Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)

• 1850 - Death of Wilhelm Beer, German astronomer (b. 1797)

• 1897 - Birth of Douglas Hartree, English mathematical physicist (d. 1958)

• 1910 - Death of Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, American scientist; son of Louis Agassiz (b. 1835)

• 1942 - Birth of John E. Sulston, British chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

• 1967 - Death of Jaroslav Heyrovský, Czech chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1890)

• 1970 - The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight

• 2007 - Death of Paul Lauterbur, American chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1929)

March 28:

• 1793 – Birth of Henry Schoolcraft, American geographer and geologist (d. 1864)

• 1794 – Death of Marquis de Condorcet, French mathematician and philosopher (b. 1743)

• 1802 – Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man

• 1874 – Death of Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish astronomer (b. 1795)

• 1905 – Birth of Marlin Perkins, American naturalist and television host (d. 1986)

• 1914 – Birth of Kenneth Richard Norris, Australian entomologist (d. 2003

• 1928 – Birth of Alexander Grothendieck, German mathematician

• 1930 – Birth of Jerome Isaac Friedman, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1946 – Cold War: The United States State Department releases the Acheson–Lilienthal Report, outlining a plan for the international control of nuclear power

• 1946 – Birth of Wubbo Ockels, Dutch physicist and astronaut

• 1982 – Death of William Giauque, Canadian chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1895)

March 29:

• 1772 - Death of Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish philosopher and mathematician (b. 1688)

• 1873 - Birth of Tullio Levi-Civita, Italian mathematician (d. 1941)

• 1873 - Death of Francesco Zantedeschi, Italian physicist (b. 1797)

• 1912 - Death of Edward Adrian Wilson, English physician and naturalist - member of the Scott Expedition to the South Pole (b. 1872)

• 1927 - Birth of John Robert Vane, English pharmacologist, Nobel laureate (d. 2004)

• 1929 - Birth of Richard Lewontin, American biologist

• 1941 - Birth of Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., American astrophysicist, Nobel laureate

• 1965 - Birth of Emilios T. Harlaftis, Greek astrophysicist (d. 2005)

• 1974 - NASA's Mariner 10 becomes the first spaceprobe to fly by Mercury. It was launched on November 3, 1973

March 30:

• 240 BC - 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet

• 1526 - Death of Konrad Mutian, German humanist (b. 1471)

• 1559 - Death of Adam Ries, German mathematician (b. 1492)

• 1783 - Death of William Hunter, Scottish anatomist (b. 1718)

• 1842 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Dr. Crawford Long

• 1858 - Hymen Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser

• 1910 - Birth of Józef Marcinkiewicz, mathematician (d. 1940)

• 1949 - Death of Friedrich Bergius, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1884)

March 31:

• 1596 - Birth of René Descartes, French mathematician (d. 1650)

• 1727 - Death of Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician and physicist (b. 1643)

• 1730 - Birth of Étienne Bézout, French mathematician (d. 1783)

• 1777 - Birth of Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist (d. 1859)

• 1778 - Birth of Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist (d. 1858)

• 1811 - Birth of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, German chemist and inventor (d. 1899)

• 1847 - Birth of Yegor Ivanovich Zolotarev, Russian mathematician (d. 1878)

• 1877 - Death of Antoine Augustin Cournot, French mathematician (b. 1801)

• 1884 - Birth of Adriaan van Maanen, Dutch-American astronomer (d. 1946)

• 1890 - Birth of Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1971)

• 1903 - Richard Pearse allegedly makes a powered flight in an early aircraft

• 1906 - Birth of Shin'ichiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1979)

• 1918 - Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time

• 1934 - Birth of Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1945 - Death of Hans Fischer, German chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1881)

• 1951 - The first commercial United States made computer, the UNIVAC I, is delivered to the United States Census Bureau

• 1978 - Death of Charles Best, Canadian medical scientist (b. 1899)

• 1994 - Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull

• 2001 - Death of Clifford Shull, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1915)