Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/October
Selected anniversaries in October
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- 1671 – Birth of Guido Grandi, Italian mathematician (d. 1742)
- 1768 – Death of Robert Simson, Scottish mathematician (b. 1687)
- 1800 – Birth of Lars Levi Laestadius, Swedish-born botanist and founder of Laestadianism (d. 1861)
- 1811 - The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrives in New Orléans, Louisiana
- 1838 – Death of Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist (b. 1768)
- 1880 - First electric lamp factory opened by Thomas Edison
- 1904 – Birth of Otto Robert Frisch, Austrian-born physicist (d. 1979)
- 1910 – Birth of José Enrique Moyal, Australian mathematical physicist (d. 1998)
- 1969 - The Concorde supersonic transport plane breaks the sound barrier for the first time
- 1851 - The pasilalinic-sympathetic compass is demonstrated but proves to be a fake
- 1852 – Birth of William Ramsay, Scottish chemist (d. 1916)
- 1853 – Death of François Jean Dominique Arago, French mathematician (b. 1786)
- 1907 – Birth of Alexander R. Todd, Scottish chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1997)
- 1917 – Birth of Christian de Duve, English-born biologist, Nobel laureate
- 1925 - John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system
- 1927 – Death of Svante Arrhenius, Swedish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859)
- 1947 – Death of Peter D. Ouspensky, Russian mathematician and philosopher (b. 1878)
- 1962 – Death of Boris Y. Bukreev, Russian mathematician (b. 1859)
- 1987 – Death of Peter Medawar, Brazilian-born scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1915)
- 2002 – Death of Heinz von Foerster, Austrian-born physicist and philosopher (b. 1911)
- 1802 – Birth of John Gorrie, American scientist (d. 1855)
- 1891 – Death of Édouard Lucas, French mathematician (b. 1842)
- 1904 – Birth of Charles J. Pedersen, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
- 1944 – Birth of Pierre Deligne, Belgian mathematician
- 1962 - Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight
- 1986 - TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, is officially opened
- 2006 – Death of John Crank, British mathematician (b. 1913)
- 1562 – Birth of Christian Sørensen Longomontanus, Danish astronomer (d. 1647)
- 1759 – Birth of Antoine Arbogast, French mathematician (d. 1803)
- 1904 – Death of Karl Bayer, Austrian chemist (b. 1847)
- 1916 – Birth of Vitaly Ginzburg, Russian physicist, Nobel laureate
- 1918 – Birth of Kenichi Fukui, Japanese chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1998)
- 1938 – Birth of Kurt Wüthrich, Swiss chemist, Nobel laureate
- 1947 – Death of Max Planck, German physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1858)
- 1957 - Space Race: Launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth
- 2000 – Death of Michael Smith, biochemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1932)
- 2004 - SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight. By being the first private craft to fly into space
- 1565 – Death of Lodovico Ferrari, Italian mathematician (b. 1522)
- 1713 – Birth of Denis Diderot, French philosopher and encyclopedist (d. 1784)
- 1777 – Death of Ján Andrej Segner, Slovak and German mathematician, physicist, and physician (b. 1704)
- 1781 – Birth of Bernard Bolzano, Czech mathematician and philosopher (d. 1848)
- 1882 – Birth of Robert Goddard, American rocket scientist (d. 1945)
- 1903 – Birth of M. King Hubbert, American geophysicist (d. 1989)
- 1905 - Wilbur Wright pilots Wright Flyer III in a flight of 24 miles in 39 minutes, a world record that stood until 1908
- 1976 – Death of Lars Onsager, Norwegian chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1903)
- 1986 – Death of James H. Wilkinson, English mathematician (b. 1919)
- 2004 – Death of Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1916)
- 2004 – Death of William H. Dobelle, American biomedical engineer, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine nominee (b. 1941)
- 1459 – Birth of Martin Behaim, German navigator and geographer (d. 1507)
- 1803 – Birth of Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, German physicist (d. 1879)
- 1831 – Birth of Richard Dedekind, German mathematician (d. 1916)
- 1889 - Thomas Edison shows his first motion picture
- 1903 – Birth of Ernest Walton, Irish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1995)
- 1908 – Birth of Sergei Lvovich Sobolev, Russian mathematician (d. 1989)
- 1921 – Birth of Yevgeniy Landis, Russian mathematician (d. 1997)
- 1931 – Birth of Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, Russian astronomer (d. 2004)
- 1931 – Birth of Riccardo Giacconi, Italian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1951 – Death of Otto Fritz Meyerhof, German-born physician and biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1884)
- 1968 – Death of Phyllis Nicolson, British mathematician (b. 1917)
- 1986 – Death of Alexander Kronrod, Russian mathematician (b. 1921)
- 1995 - 51 Pegasi is discovered to be the first major star apart from the Sun to have a planet (and extrasolar planet) orbiting around it
- 2007 - Jason Lewis completes the first human-powered circumnavigation of the globe
- 1885 – Birth of Niels Bohr, Danish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962)
- 1896 – Death of Emma Wedgwood, English naturalist, wife of Charles Darwin, (b. 1808)
- 1903 – Death of Rudolf Lipschitz, German mathematician (b. 1832)
- 1939 – Birth of Harold Kroto, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1959 - U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits first ever photographs of the far side of the Moon
- 1962 - U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya, U.S.S.R
- 2001 – Death of Roger Gaudry, French Canadian chemist, businessman and corporate director (b. 1913)
- 1652 – Death of John Greaves, English mathematician (b. 1602)
- 1789 – Birth of William John Swainson, English naturalist and artist (d. 1855)
- 1850 – Birth of Henri Louis le Chatelier, French chemist (d. 1936)
- 1917 – Birth of Rodney Robert Porter, English biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1985)
- 1918 – Birth of Jens Christian Skou, Danish chemist, Nobel laureate
- 1927 – Birth of César Milstein, Argentine scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 2002)
- 1985 – Death of Malcolm Ross, American balloonist and atmospheric physicist (b. 1919)
- 2008 – Death of George Emil Palade, Romanian cell biologist (b. 1912)
- 1562 – Death of Gabriele Falloppio, Italian anatomist and early advocate for the use of condoms. (b. 1523)
- 1581 – Birth of Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, French mathematician (d. 1638)
- 1604 - Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way
- 1704 – Birth of Ján Andrej Segner, Slovak and German mathematician, physicist, and physician (d. 1777)
- 1806 – Death of Benjamin Banneker, American astronomer (b. 1731)
- 1852 – Birth of Hermann Emil Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919)
- 1879 – Birth of Max von Laue, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1960)
- 1933 – Birth of Peter Mansfield, British physicist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate
- 1936 - Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles (428 km) to Los Angeles, California
- 1943 – Birth of Douglas Kirby, Research scientist
- 1943 – Death of Pieter Zeeman, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1865)
- 1967 – Death of Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1897)
- 1992 - A 13 kilogram (est.) fragment of the Peekskill meteorite lands in the driveway of the Knapp residence in Peekskill, New York, destroying the family's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu
- 1708 – Death of David Gregory, Scottish astronomer (b. 1659)
- 1731 – Birth of Henry Cavendish, British scientist (d. 1810)
- 1876 – Death of Charles Joseph Sainte-Claire Deville, French geologist (b. 1814)
- 1930 – Birth of Yves Chauvin, French chemist, Nobel laureate
- 1930 – Death of Adolf Engler, German botanist (b. 1844)
- 1936 – Birth of Gerhard Ertl, German surface chemist, Nobel laureate, 2007
- 1967 – The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, comes into force
- 1986 – Death of Gleb Wataghin, Ukrainian-Italian physicist (b. 1899)
- 1705 – Death of Guillaume Amontons, French physicist and instrument maker (b. 1663)
- 1708 – Death of Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, German mathematician (b. 1651)
- 1758 – Birth of Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer (d. 1840)
- 1811 - Inventor John Stevens' boat, the Juliana, begins operation as the first steam-powered ferry (service between New York, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey)
- 1811 – Death of Johann Conrad Ammann, Swiss physician and naturalist (b. 1724)
- 1852 – Death of Ferdinand Eisenstein, German mathematician (b. 1823)
- 1884 – Birth of Friedrich Bergius, German chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1949)
- 1889 – Death of James Prescott Joule, English physicist (b. 1818)
- 1940 – Death of Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician and physicist (b. 1860)
- 1950 - Television: CBS's mechanical color system is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission
- 1958 – Birth of Gregory Dudek, Canadian roboticist and computer scientist
- 1989 – Death of M. King Hubbert, American geophysicist (b. 1904)
- 1996 – Death of Lars Ahlfors, Finnish mathematician (b. 1907)
- 1712 – Birth of William Shippen, American physician and statesman (d. 1801)
- 1725 – Birth of Etienne Louis Geoffroy, French pharmacist and entomologist (d. 1810)
- 1792 – Birth of Christian Gmelin, German chemist (d. 1860)
- 1865 – Birth of Arthur Harden, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
- 1934 – Birth of Albert Shiryaev, Russian mathematician
- 1965 – Death of Paul Hermann Müller, Swiss chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1899)
- 1687 – Death of Geminiano Montanari, Italian astronomer (b. 1633)
- 1773 - The Whirlpool Galaxy is discovered by Charles Messier
- 1820 – Birth of John William Dawson, Canadian geologist (d. 1899)
- 1821 – Birth of Rudolf Virchow, German physician, pathologist, biologist, and politician (d. 1902)
- 1884 - Greenwich is established as universal time meridian of longitude
- 1892 - Edward Emerson Barnard discovers D/1892 T1, the first comet discovered by photographic means, on the night of October 13-14
- 1917 - The "Miracle of the Sun" is witnessed by an estimated 70,000 people in the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal
- 1954 – Birth of Mordechai Vanunu, Israeli nuclear technician
- 1976 - The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle was obtained by Dr. F.A. Murphy, now at U.C. Davis, who was then working at the C.D.C.
- 1987 – Death of Walter Brattain, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1902)
- 2003 – Death of Bertram Brockhouse, Canadian physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1918)
- 1687 – Birth of Robert Simson, Scottish mathematician (d. 1768)
- 1801 – Birth of Joseph Plateau, Belgian physicist (d. 1883)
- 1831 – Death of Jean-Louis Pons, French astronomer (b. 1761)
- 1861 – Birth of Artur Gavazzi, Croatian geographer (d. 1944)
- 1884 - George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film
- 1914 – Birth of Raymond Davis Jr., American physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 2006)
- 1932 – Birth of Anatoly Larkin, Russian-American physicist (d. 2005)
- 1946 – Birth of Craig Venter, American biologist
- 1958 - The U.S. conducts an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site
- 1960 – Death of Abram Ioffe, Russian physicist (b. 1880)
- 1983 – Death of Willard Price, Canadian author and naturalist (b. 1887)
- 1984 – Death of Martin Ryle, English radio astronomer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics (b. 1918)
- 1471 – Birth of Konrad Mutian, German humanist (d. 1526)
- 1564 – Death of Vesalius, Flemish anatomist (b. 1514)
- 1608 – Birth of Evangelista Torricelli, Italian physicist (d. 1647)
- 1715 – Death of Humphry Ditton, English mathematician (b. 1675)
- 1829 – Birth of Asaph Hall, American astronomer (d. 1907)
- 1878 - The Edison Electric Light Company begins operation
- 1909 – Birth of Jesse Leonard Greenstein, American astronomer (d. 2002)
- 1919 – Birth of Malcolm Ross, American balloonist and atmospheric physicist (d. 1985)
- 1940 – Birth of Peter Doherty, Australian immunologist, Nobel laureate
- 1953 - British nuclear test Totem 1 detonated at Emu Field, South Australia
- 1959 – Death of Lipót Fejér, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1880)
- 1980 – Death of Mikhail Lavrentyev, Russian physicist and mathematician (b. 1900)
- 1997 - The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.
- 2000 – Death of Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1912)
- 2001 - NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io
- 2003 – Death of Bertram N. Brockhouse, Canadian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918)
- 1655 – Death of Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, Italian physician, mathematician, and music theorist (b. 1591)
- 1714 – Birth of Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist (d. 1795)
- 1563 – Birth of Jodocus Hondius, Flemish cartographer (d. 1611)
- 1604 - Kepler's Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes that an exceptionally bright star had suddenly appeared in the constellation. Ophiuchus, which turned out to be the last supernova to have been observed in our own galaxy, the Milky Way
- 1757 – Death of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French scientist (b. 1683)
- 1780 – Death of William Cookworthy, English chemist (b. 1705)
- 1887 – Death of Gustav Kirchhoff, German physicist (b. 1824)
- 1888 - Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie)
- 1931 – Death of Alfons Maria Jakob, German neurologist (b. 1884)
- 1933 - Albert Einstein, fleeing Nazi Germany, moves to the U.S.
- 1934 – Death of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist and neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1852)
- 1936 – Birth of Hiroo Kanamori, Japanese seismologist
- 1963 – Death of Jacques Hadamard, French mathematician (b. 1865)
- 1999 – Death of Nicholas Metropolis, Greek-American mathematician, physicist and computer scientist (b. 1915)
- 1547 – Birth of Justus Lipsius, Flemish humanist (d. 1606)
- 1564 – Death of Johannes Acronius Frisius, German physician and mathematician (b. 1520)
- 1871 – Death of Charles Babbage, English mathematician and inventor (b. 1791)
- 1902 – Birth of Pascual Jordan, German physicist (d. 1980)
- 1967 - The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet
- 1688 – Birth of William Cheselden, English surgeon and anatomist (d. 1752)
- 1858 – Birth of George Albert Boulenger, Belgian naturalist (d. 1937)
- 1897 – Birth of Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani scientist and scholar (d. 1994)
- 1909 – Birth of Marguerite Perey, French physicist (d. 1975)
- 1910 – Birth of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1995)
- 1937 – Death of Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1871)
- 1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University
- 1951 – Birth of Demetrios Christodoulou, Greek mathematical physicist, recipient of the Bôcher Memorial Prize
- 1616 – Birth of Thomas Bartholin, Danish physician, mathematician, and theologian (d. 1680)
- 1631 – Death of Michael Maestlin, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1550)
- 1785 – Birth of George Ormerod, English historian and antiquarian (d. 1873)
- 1808 – Birth of Karl Andree, German geographer (d. 1875)
- 1891 – Birth of James Chadwick, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
- 1942 – Birth of Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 1944 – Birth of Nalin de Silva, Sri Lankan theoretical physicist, philosopher and a political analyst
- 1972 – Death of Harlow Shapley, American astronomer (b. 1885)
- 1984 – Death of Carl Ferdinand Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1896)
- 1984 – Death of Paul Dirac, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
- 1987 – Death of Andrey Kolmogorov, Russian mathematician (b. 1903)
- 1505 – Death of Paul Scriptoris, German mathematician
- 1520 - Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan
- 1660 – Birth of Georg Ernst Stahl, German scientist (d. 1734)
- 1687 – Birth of Nicolaus I Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d. 1759)
- 1821 – Birth of Eduard Heine, German mathematician (d. 1881)
- 1833 – Birth of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize (d. 1896)
- 1872 – Death of Jacques Babinet, French physicist (b. 1794)
- 1914 – Birth of Martin Gardner, American mathematician and writer
- 1952 – Death of Hans Merensky, South African geologist and philanthropist (b. 1871)
- 1957 – Birth of Wolfgang Ketterle, German physicist, Nobel laureate
- 1965 - Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun
- 1969 – Death of Waclaw Sierpinski, Polish mathematician (b. 1882)
- 2003 - Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz
- 1511 – Birth of Erasmus Reinhold, German astronomer and mathematician (d. 1553)
- 1729 – Birth of Johann Reinhold Forster, German botanist (d. 1798)
- 1792 – Death of Guillaume Le Gentil, French astronomer (b. 1725)
- 1881 – Birth of Clinton Davisson, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
- 1896 – Birth of Charles Glen King, American biochemist (d. 1988)
- 1903 – Birth of George Wells Beadle, American geneticist, Nobel laureate (d. 1989)
- 1921 – Birth of Alexander Kronrod, Russian mathematician (d. 1986)
- 1968 - Apollo program: Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times
- 1986 – Death of Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1893)
- 2008 - India launches its first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1
- 1581 – Death of Michael Neander, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1529)
- 1873 – Birth of William D. Coolidge, American physicist and inventor (d. 1975)
- 1875 – Birth of Gilbert N. Lewis, American chemist (d. 1946)
- 1905 – Birth of Felix Bloch, Swiss physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1983)
- 1920 – Birth of Ted Fujita, Japanese meteorologist (d. 1998)
- 1944 – Death of Charles Glover Barkla, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877)
- 1986 – Death of Edward Adelbert Doisy, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1893)
- 1601 – Death of Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer (b. 1546)
- 1632 – Birth of Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch microbiologist (d. 1723)
- 1655 – Death of Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist (b. 1592)
- 1804 – Birth of Wilhelm Eduard Weber, German physicist (d. 1891)
- 1854 – Birth of Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom, Dutch chemist (d. 1907)
- 1906 – Birth of Alexander Gelfond, Russian mathematician (d. 1968)
- 1920 – Birth of Marcel-Paul Schützenberger, French mathematician (d. 1996)
- 1932 – Birth of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2007)
- 1946 - A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space
- 1966 – Sofya Yanovskaya, Russian mathematician (b. 1896)
- 1998 - Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission
- 1647 – Death of Evangelista Torricelli, Italian physicist and mathematician (b. 1608)
- 1733 – Death of Giovanni Gerolamo Saccheri, Italian mathematician (b. 1667)
- 1811 – Birth of Évariste Galois, French mathematician (d. 1832)
- 1856 – Birth of Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger, Croatian paleontologist (d. 1936)
- 1910 – Birth of William Higinbotham, American physicist (d. 1994)
- 1915 – Birth of Ivan M. Niven, Canadian mathematician (d. 1999)
- 1817 – Death of Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Austrian scientist (b. 1727)
- 1849 – Birth of Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, German mathematician (d. 1917)
- 1874 – Birth of Martin Lowry, British chemist (d. 1936)
- 1936 - The first electric generator at Hoover Dam went into full operation
- 1945 – Death of Aleksey Krylov, Russian engineer and mathematician (b. 1863)
- 1989 – Death of Charles J. Pedersen, American Nobel laureate (b. 1904)
- 1992 - The London Ambulance Service was thrown into chaos after the implementation of a new CAD, or Computer Aided Despatch, system which failed
- 2007 – Death of Dr. Arthur Kornberg, American Nobel Prize laureate in 1959 for the discovery of DNA polymerase (b. 1918)
- 1675 – Death of Gilles de Roberval, French mathematician (b. 1602)
- 1904 - The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world
- 1921 – Birth of Warren Allen Smith, American encyclopedist
- 1953 - British nuclear test Totem 2 is carried out at Emu Field, South Australia
- 1968 – Death of Lise Meitner, German physicist (b. 1878)
- 1980 – Death of John Hasbrouck van Vleck, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1899)
- 1992 – Death of David Bohm, American-born physicist, philosopher, and neuropsychologist (b. 1917)
- 1999 – Death of Robert Mills, American physicist (b. 1927)
- 1703 – Birth of Antoine Deparcieux, French mathematician (d. 1768)
- 1703 – Death of John Wallis, English mathematician (b. 1616)
- 1792 – Death of Paul Möhring, German physician and scientist (b. 1710)
- 1804 – Birth of Pierre François Verhulst, Belgian mathematician (d. 1849)
- 1841 – Death of Johan August Arfwedson, Swedish chemist (b. 1792)
- 1845 – Birth of Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski, Polish physicist (d. 1888)
- 1877 – Death of Robert Swinhoe, British naturalist (b. 1835)
- 1914 – Birth of Jonas Salk, American biologist and physician (d. 1995)
- 1914 – Birth of Richard Laurence Millington Synge, Nobel laureate (d. 1994)
- 1918 – Death of Ulisse Dini, Italian mathematician (b. 1845)
- 1957 – Death of Ernst Gräfenberg, German physician and scientist (b. 1881)
- 1960 – Birth of Landon Curt Noll, Astronomer, Cryptographer and Mathematician: youngest to hold the world record for the largest known prime 3 times
- 1970 - Gary Gabelich sets a land speed record in a rocket-powered automobile called the Blue Flame, fueled with natural gas
- 2005 – Death of Richard Smalley, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1943)
- 1783 – Death of Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician (b. 1717)
- 1827 – Birth of Marcellin Berthelot, French chemist (d. 1907)
- 1880 – Birth of Abram Ioffe, Soviet physicist (d. 1960)
- 1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet
- 1971 – Death of Arne Tiselius, Swedish chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1902)
- 1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid
- 2004 – Death of Peter Twinn, English mathematician (b. 1916)
- 1626 – Death of Willebrord Snell, Dutch astronomer and mathematician (b. 1580)
- 1844 – Birth of Harvey W. Wiley, American chemist (d. 1930)
- 1847 – Birth of Galileo Ferraris, Italian physicist (d. 1897)
- 1857 – Birth of Georges Gilles de la Tourette, French neurologist (d. 1904)
- 1900 – Birth of Ragnar Granit Finnish neuroscientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1991)
- 1909 – Birth of Homi J. Bhabha, Indian physicist (d. 1966)
- 1939 – Birth of Leland H. Hartwell, American scientist, Nobel laureate
- 1941 – Birth of Theodor W. Hänsch, German physicist, Nobel laureate
- 1961 - Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise. Nikita Khrushchev announces that the scientists had planned to make it 100 megatons, but had reduced the yield to reduce fallout over the Soviet Union
- 1975 – Death of Gustav Ludwig Hertz, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1887)
- 1979 – Death of Sir Barnes Wallis, British scientist, engineer and inventor (b. 1887)
- 2002 - British Digital terrestrial television (DTT) Service Freeview begins transmitting in parts of the United Kingdom
- 1815 – Birth of Karl Weierstraß, German mathematician (d. 1897)
- 1831 – Birth of Paolo Mantegazza, Italian neurologist (d. 1910)
- 1835 – Birth of Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1917)
- 1902 – Birth of Abraham Wald, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1950)
- 1925 – Birth of John Pople, English chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2004)
- 1941 – Birth of Dan Alderson, American scientist
- 1943 – Birth of Paul Frampton, English physicist
- 1959 – Death of Jean Cabannes, French physicist (b. 1885)
- 1986 – Death of Robert S. Mulliken, American physicist and chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1896)