|
1642 In Science
The year 1642 in science and technology involved some significant events. Astronomy * Rundetårn astronomical observatory for the University of Copenhagen is completed, as is also the Panzano Observatory. Computing * 19-year-old Blaise Pascal begins to develop the Pascaline, the first practical mechanical calculator, initially to help with the recording of taxes. Exploration * November 24 – Abel Tasman, Dutch explorer, is the first European known to sight Tasmania, which he names Anthoonij van Diemenslandt. * December 13 – Tasman is the first European known to sight New Zealand. Technology * Opening throughout of the Briare Canal in France, the first summit level canal in Europe built using pound locks. * The printmaking process of mezzotint is developed by Ludwig von Siegen. Births * March ''(possible date)'' – Seki Takakazu, Japanese mathematician (died 1708) * December 25 ( OS) – Isaac Newton, English polymath (died 1727) Deaths * January 8 – Galileo Galilei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Summit Level Canal
A summit-level canal is an artificial waterway connecting two separate river valleys. The term refers to a canal that rises to cross a summit then falls down the other side. The summit pound is a level stretch of water at the highest part of the canal, contained by two locks that prevent the water from flowing downstream in both directions. Since water flows out when locks open to admit boats, the summit pound must have a water supply. By contrast, a ''lateral canal'' has a continuous fall only. Summit-level canals were an essential step in developing transport systems connecting different parts of a country before the railways or modern road transport. History The first canal to connect rivers across a watershed was the Lingqu Canal ("Magic Canal") in China which connected the Xiang and Li rivers in 219 BCE for military transport; however this is not usually considered a summit level canal as the summit level was a flat cut and there were originally no locks, though lateral c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science. Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances". He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, observation of Saturn's rings, and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1727 In Science
The year 1727 in science and technology involved some significant events. Astronomy * Maharaja Jai Singh II begins construction of the Jantar Mantar observatory at Jaipur. Biology * Rev. Stephen Hales publishes ''Vegetable Staticks'', containing an account of key experiments in plant physiology; and makes the first measurement of blood pressure. Forssmann, Werner. Nobel Lecture in Physiology or Medicine, 1956. Mathematics * This year's French Academy of Sciences prize is based on a problem on the masting of ships: to calculate the number of masts to use and where in the ship to locate them. Pierre Bouguer gains the award for his paper ''On the masting of ships''; and two other prizes, one for his dissertation ''On the best method of observing the altitude of stars at sea'' and the other for his paper ''On the best method of observing the variation of the compass at sea''. The 19-year-old Euler enters for the prize with an essay written in 1726 and published in 1728. Optics * Ey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polymath
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. In Western Europe, the first work to use the term polymathy in its title () was published in 1603 by Johann von Wowern, a Hamburg philosopher. Von Wowern defined polymathy as "knowledge of various matters, drawn from all kinds of studies ... ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines, as far as the human mind, with unwearied industry, is able to pursue them". Von Wowern lists erudition, literature, philology, philomathy, and polyhistory as synonyms. The earliest recorded use of the term in the English language is from 1624, in the second edition of ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' by Robert Burton; the form ''polymathist'' is slightly older, first appearing in the ''Diatribae upon the first part of the late History ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English People
The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language in England, English language, a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language, and share a common history and culture. The English identity is of History of Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon origin, when they were known in Old English as the ('race or tribe of the Angles'). Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain around the 5th century AD. The English largely descend from two main historical population groups the West Germanic tribes (the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians) who settled in southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Ancient Rome, Romans, and the Romano-British culture, partially Romanised Celtic Britons already living there.Martiniano, R., Caffell, A., Holst, M. et al. Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons. Nat Commun 7, 10326 (2016). https://doi.org/10 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus. In the , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Style And New Style Dates
Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, this is the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries between 1582 and 1923. In England, Wales, Ireland and Britain's American colonies, there were two calendar changes, both in 1752. The first adjusted the start of a new year from Lady Day (25 March) to 1 January (which Scotland had done from 1600), while the second discarded the Julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar, removing 11 days from the September 1752 calendar to do so.Spathaky, MikOld Style and New Style Dates and the change to the Gregorian Calendar "Before 1752, parish registers, in addition to a new year heading after 24th March showing, for example '1733', had another heading at the end of the following December indicating '1733/4'. This showed where the Historical Year 1734 started even though the Civil Year 1733 continued u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1708 In Science
{{Science year nav, 1708 The year 1708 in science and technology involved some significant events. Physiology and medicine * Herman Boerhaave publishes ''Institutiones medicae'', one of the earliest textbooks on physiology. Technology * Calcareous hard-paste porcelain is produced at Dresden in Saxony by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and developed after his death (October) by Johann Friedrich Böttger. Births * January 30 – Georg Dionysius Ehret, German artist, botanist and entomologist (died 1770) * October 16 – Albrecht von Haller, Swiss physician and scientist, founder of neurology (died 1777) * October 22 – Frederic Louis Norden, Danish explorer (died 1742) * October 27 – Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, French bridge engineer (died 1794) Deaths * August 1 – Edward Tyson, English comparative anatomist (born 1651) * October 10 – David Gregory, Scottish astronomer (born 1659) * October 11 – Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus, German mathematician (born 1651) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History One of the earliest known mathematicians were Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC); he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. The number of known mathematicians grew when Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC) established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans Japanese archipelago, an archipelago of List of islands of Japan, 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa Island, Okinawa. Tokyo is the Capital of Japan, nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated and Urbanization by country, urbanized. About three-fourths of Geography of Japan, the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seki Takakazu
, Selin, Helaine. (1997). ''Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures,'' p. 890 also known as ,Selin, was a Japanese mathematician and author of the Edo period. Seki laid foundations for the subsequent development of Japanese mathematics, known as ''wasan''. He has been described as "Japan's Newton". He created a new algebraic notation system and, motivated by astronomical computations, did work on infinitesimal calculus and Diophantine equations. Although he was a contemporary of German polymath mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and British polymath physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, Seki's work was independent. His successors later developed a school dominant in Japanese mathematics until the end of the Edo period. While it is not clear how much of the achievements of ''wasan'' are Seki's, since many of them appear only in writings of his pupils, some of the results parallel or anticipate those discovered i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
