Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/December

Selected anniversaries in December

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

December 1:

• 1525 - Birth of Tadeáš Hájek, Czech physician and astronomer (d. 1600)
• 1743 - Birth of Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist (d. 1817)
• 1750 - Death of Johan Gabriel Doppelmayr, German mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer (b. 1671)
• 1792 - Birth of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician (d. 1856)
• 1925 - Birth of Martin Rodbell, American scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1998)
• 1964 - Death of J. B. S. Haldane, Scottish geneticist (b. 1892)

December 2:

• 1885 – Birth of George Richards Minot, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize (d. 1950)
• 1931 – Birth of Nigel Calder, British science writer
• 1942 - Manhattan Project: A team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction

December 3:

• 1776 – Birth of Johann Spurzheim, German neuroscientist (d. 1832)
• 1842 - Birth of Ellen Swallow Richards, American scientist (d. 1911)
• 1886 - Birth of Manne Siegbahn, Nobel laureate (d. 1978)
• 1888 – Death of Carl Zeiss, German lens maker (b. 1816)
• 1900 – Birth of Richard Kuhn, Austrian-German biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1967)
• 1904 - The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory
• 1933 – Birth of Paul J. Crutzen, Dutch chemist, Nobel laureate
• 1967 - First successful heart transplant carried out by Christiaan Barnard

• 1982 - A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri, that will be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin
• 1984 – Death of Vladimir Rokhlin, Russian mathematician (b. 1919)

December 4:

• 1123 – Death of Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher (b. 1048)
• 1576 – Death of Rheticus, Austrian mathematician (b. 1514)
• 1798 – Death of Luigi Galvani, Italian physicist (b. 1737)
• 1850 – Death of William Sturgeon, English physicist and inventor (b. 1783)
• 1908 – Birth of Alfred Hershey, American bacteriologist, Nobel laureate (d. 1997)
• 1988 – Death of Osman Achmatowicz, Polish chemist (b. 1899)

December 5:

• 1624 - Death of Gaspard Bauhin, Swiss botanist (b. 1560)
• 1770 - Death of James Stirling, Scottish mathematician (b. 1692)
• 1863 - Birth of Paul Painlevé, French mathematician (d. 1933)
• 1868 - Birth of Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist (d. 1951)
• 1893 - First appearance of an electric car
• 1895 - Birth of Elbert Frank Cox, American mathematician (d. 1969)
• 1896 - Birth of Carl Ferdinand Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1984)
• 1901 - Birth of Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1976)
• 1903 - Birth of Cecil Frank Powell, English physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1969)
• 1907 - Birth of Giuseppe Occhialini, Italian physicist (d. 1993)
• 1932 - German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa
• 1932 - Birth of Sheldon Lee Glashow, American physicist, Nobel laureate
• 1952 - Great Smog of 1952: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow
• 1973 - Death of Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish engineer, inventor of radar (b. 1892)
• 2001 - Death of Franco Rasetti, Italian physicist (b. 1901)

December 6:

• 1586 - Birth of Niccolò Zucchi, Italian astronomer (d. 1670)

• 1771 - Death of Giovanni Battista Morgagni, Italian anatomist (b. 1682)

• 1778 - Birth of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French physicist and chemist (d. 1850)

• 1855 - Death of William John Swainson, English naturalist and artist (b. 1789)

• 1863 - Birth of Charles Martin Hall, American chemist (d. 1914

• 1867 - Death of Jean Pierre Flourens, French physician (b. 1794)

• 1890 - Birth of Yoshio Nishina, Japanese physicist (d. 1951)

• 1920 - Birth of George Porter, British chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2002)

December 7:

• 903 - Birth of Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, Persian astronomer (d. 986)
• 1810 - Birth of Josef Hyrtl, Austrian anatomist (d. 1894)
• 1810 - Birth of Theodor Schwann, German physiologist (d. 1882)
• 1903 - Birth of Danilo Blanuša, Croatian mathematician (d. 1987)
• 1977 - Death of Peter Carl Goldmark, Hungarian-born American engineer (b. 1906)
• 1978 - Death of Alexander Wetmore, American ornithologist (b. 1886)
• 1998 - Death of Martin Rodbell, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1925)

December 8:

• 1609 - Biblioteca Ambrosiana opens its reading room, the second public library of Europe

• 1632 - Death of Philippe van Lansberge, Flemish astronomer (b. 1561)

• 1730 - Birth of Jan Ingenhousz, Dutch-born British physiologist and botanist (d. 1799)

• 1765 - Birth of Eli Whitney, American inventor (d. 1825)

• 1795 - Birth of Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish astronomer (d. 1874)

• 1864 - Death of George Boole, British inventor of Boolean algebra (b. 1815)

• 1865 - Birth of Jacques Hadamard, French mathematician (d. 1963)

• 1894 - Death of Pafnuty Chebyshev, Russian mathematician (b. 1821)

• 1923 - Birth of Rudolph Pariser, Chinese-born American chemist

• 1947 - Birth of Thomas R. Cech, American chemist, Nobel laureate

• 1949 - Birth of Robert Sternberg, Proposed the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

• 1953 - Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the Atoms for Peace speech

December 9:

• 1508 - Birth of Gemma Frisius, Dutch mathematician and cartographer (d. 1555)

• 1571 - Birth of Metius (Adriaan Adriaanszoon), Dutch mathematician and astronomer (d. 1635)

• 1625 - Death of Ubbo Emmius, Dutch historian and geographer (b. 1547)

• 1667 - Birth of William Whiston, English mathematician (d. 1752)

• 1718 - Vincenzo Coronelli, Italian cartographer and encyclopaedist (b. 1650)

• 1748 - Birth of Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist (d. 1822)

• 1868 - Birth of Fritz Haber, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1934)

• 1883 - Birth of Nikolai Luzin, Russian mathematician (d. 1950)

• 1894 - Death of Pafnuty Chebyshev, Russian mathematician (b. 1821)

• 1917 - Birth of James Rainwater, American physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1986)

• 1919 - Birth of William Lipscomb, American chemist, Nobel laureate

• 1926 - Birth of Henry Way Kendall, American physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1999)

• 1937 - Death of Nils Gustaf Dalén, Swedish physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1869)

• 1955 - Death of Hermann Weyl, German mathematician (b. 1885)

December 10:

• 1198 - Death of Averroes, Arab physician and philosopher (b. 1126)

• 1452 - Birth of Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician and astronomer (d. 1531)

• 1588 - Birth of Isaac Beeckman, Dutch scientist and philosopher (d. 1637)

• 1603 - Death of William Gilbert, English scientist (b. 1544)

• 1626 - Death of Edmund Gunter, English mathematician (b. 1581)

• 1684 - Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley

• 1751 - Birth of George Shaw, English botanist and zoologist (d. 1813)

• 1804 - Birth of Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi, German mathematician (d. 1851)

• 1805 - Birth of Josef Skoda, Bohemian physician (d. 1881)

• 1815 - Birth of Ada Lovelace, English mathematician (d. 1852)

• 1831 - Death of Thomas Seebeck, Baltic German physicist (b. 1770)

• 1850 - Death of François Sulpice Beudant, French mineralogist and geologist (b. 1787)

• 1896 - Death of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize (b. 1833)

• 1911 - Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, English botanist (b. 1817)

• 1934 - Birth of Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist, Nobel laureate (d. 1994)

• 1973 - Death of Wolf Vishniac, American microbiologist (b. 1922)

December 11:

• 1761 - Birth of Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Italian physicist (d. 1835)

• 1781 - Birth of Sir David Brewster, Scottish physicist (d. 1868)

• 1843 - Birth of Robert Koch, German bacteriologist, Nobel laureate (d. 1910)

• 1863 - Birth of Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer (d. 1941)

• 1873 - Birth of Josip Plemelj, Slovenian mathematician (d. 1967)

• 1882 - Birth of Max Born, German physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1970)

• 1925 - Birth of Paul Greengard, American neuroscientist, Nobel laureate

• 1941 - Death of Émile Picard, French mathematician (b. 1856)

• 1945 - Death of Charles Fabry, French physicist (b. 1867)

• 1978 - Death of Vincent du Vigneaud, American chemist and Nobel laureate (b. 1901)

• 1979 - Death of James J. Gibson, American perceptual psychologist (b. 1904)

December 12:

• 1685 - Death of John Pell, English mathematician (b. 1610)

• 1866 - Birth of Alfred Werner, Swiss chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1919)

• 1892 - Birth of Herman Potocnik aka Hermann Noordung, Slovenian rocket engineer (d. 1929)

• 1889 - Death of Viktor Bunyakovsky, Russian mathematician (b. 1804)

• 1901 - Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland

• 1919 - Birth of Olivia Barclay, English astrologer (d. 2001)

• 1927 - Birth of Robert Noyce, American inventor (d. 1990)

• 1997 - Death of Yevgeniy Landis, Russian mathematician (b. 1921)

December 13:

• 1048 - Death of Al-Biruni, Persian mathematician (b. 973)

• 1516 - Death of Johannes Trithemius, German cryptographer (b. 1462)

• 1557 - Death of Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia, Italian mathematician

• 1565 - Death of Conrad Gessner, Swiss naturalist (b. 1516)

• 1603 - Death of François Viète, French mathematician (b. 1540)

• 1640 - Birth of Robert Plot, English naturalist (d. 1696)

• 1662 - Birth of Francesco Bianchini, Italian philosopher and scientist (d. 1729)

• 1724 - Birth of Franz Aepinus, German scientist (d. 1802)

• 1783 - Death of Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer (b. 1717)

• 1816 - Birth of Ernst Werner von Siemens, German engineer, inventor, and industrialist (d. 1892)

• 1867 - Birth of Kristian Birkeland, Norwegian explorer and scientist (d. 1917)

• 1868 - Death of Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, German botanist (b. 1794)

• 1887 - Birth of George Pólya, Hungarian-born mathematician (d. 1985)

• 1895 - Death of Ányos Jedlik, Hungarian physicist (b. 1800)

• 1919 - Death of Woldemar Voigt, German physicist (b. 1850)

• 1923 - Birth of Philip Warren Anderson, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1930 - Death of Fritz Pregl, Slovenian/Austrian chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1869)

• 1935 - Death of Victor Grignard, French chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1871)

• 1940 - Death of Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval, French physicist (b. 1851)

• 1950 - Death of Abraham Wald, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1902)

• 1962 - NASA "Relay 1" launch, first active repeater communications satellite in orbit

December 14:

• 1503 - Birth of Nostradamus, French astrologer (d. 1566)

• 1546 - Birth of Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer and alchemist (d. 1601)

• 1782 - The Montgolfier brothers first balloon lifts on its first test flight

• 1865 - Death of Johan Georg Forchhammer, Danish geologist (b. 1794)

• 1873 - Death of Louis Agassiz, Swiss-born American zoologist and geologist (b. 1807)

• 1900 - Quantum Mechanics: Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law

• 1903 - The Wright Brothers make their first attempt to fly with the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

• 1909 - Birth of Edward Tatum, American geneticist, Nobel laureate (d. 1975)

• 1922 - Birth of Nikolay Basov, Soviet physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 2001)

• 1927 - Death of Yulian Vasilievich Sokhotski, Russian mathematician (b. 1842)

• 1989 - Death of Andrei D. Sakharov, Russian physicist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1921)

December 15:

• 1852 - Birth of Henri Becquerel, French physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1908)

• 1855 - Death of Jacques Charles François Sturm, French mathematician (b. 1803)

• 1913 - Birth of Roger Gaudry, French Canadian chemist, businessman and corporate director (d. 2001)

• 1916 - Birth of Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand-born physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 2004)

• 1923 - Birth of Freeman Dyson, English-born American physicist

• 1958 - Death of Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Austrian-born American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1900)

December 16:

• 1687 - Death of William Petty, English scientist and philosopher (b. 1623)

• 1776 - Birth of Johann Wilhelm Ritter, German physicist (d. 1810)

• 1804 - Birth of Viktor Bunyakovsky, Russian mathematician (d. 1889)

• 1809 - Death of Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, French chemist (b. 1755)

• 1882 - Birth of Walther Meissner, German physicist (d. 1974)

• 1905 - Birth of Piet Hein, Danish mathematician and inventor (d. 1996)

• 1980 - Death of Hellmuth Walter, German engineer and inventor (b. 1900)

December 17:

• 1706 - Birth of Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician and physicist (d. 1749)

• 1778 - Birth of Sir Humphry Davy, English chemist and physicist (d. 1829)

• 1835 - Birth of Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, American scientist; son of Louis Agassiz

• 1900 - Birth of Mary Cartwright, English mathematician (d. 1998)

• 1907 - Death of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Irish-born physicist (b. 1824)

• 1908 - Birth of Willard Frank Libby, American chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1980)

• 1920 - Birth of Kenneth E. Iverson, Canadian computer scientist (d. 2004)

• 1940 - Death of Alicia Boole Stott, Irish mathematician (b. 1860)

• 1964 - Death of Victor Franz Hess, Austrian-born physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1883)

December 18:

• 1661 - Birth of Christopher Polhem, Swedish scientist and inventor (d. 1751)

• 1799 - Death of Jean-Étienne Montucla, French mathematician (b. 1725)

• 1829 - Death of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French scientist (b. 1744)

• 1856 - Birth of Sir J. J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1940)

• 1880 - Death of Michel Chasles, French mathematician (b. 1793)

• 1936 - Death of Andrija Mohorovičić, Austro-Hungarian-born Yugoslav seismologist (b. 1857)

• 1939 - Birth of Harold E. Varmus, American scientist, Nobel laureate

• 1949 - Birth of David A. Johnston, American volcanologist (d. 1980)

• 1966 - Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker

• 1975 - Death of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ukrainian geneticist (b. 1900)

• 1994 - Death of Roger Apéry, Greek-French mathematician (b. 1916)

• 1995 - Death of Konrad Zuse, German engineer and computing pioneer (b. 1910)

• 1996 - Death of Yulii Borisovich Khariton, Russian physicist (b. 1904)

December 19:

• 1714 - Birth of John Winthrop, American astronomer (d. 1779)

• 1813 - Birth of Thomas Andrews, Irish chemist (d. 1885)

• 1814 - Death of Joseph Bramah, Inventor and Locksmith, notably invented the beer pump

• 1852 - Birth of Albert Abraham Michelson, Prussian-born American physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1931)

• 1901 - Birth of Rudolf Hell, German inventor (d. 2002)

• 1903 - Birth of George Davis Snell, American geneticist, Nobel laureate (d. 1996)

• 1915 - Death of Alois Alzheimer, German neuroscientist (b. 1864)

• 1944 - Birth of Mitchell Feigenbaum, American mathematical physicist

• 1946 - Death of Paul Langevin, French physicist (b. 1872)

• 1953 - Death of Robert Millikan, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1868)

• 1961 - Birth of Eric Allin Cornell, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 2004 - Death of Herbert C. Brown, English-born American chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1912)

December 20:

• 1494 - Birth of Oronce Finé, French mathematician (d. 1555)

• 1833 - Birth of Samuel Mudd, American physician (d. 1883)

• 1862 - Death of Robert Knox, Scottish surgeon, anatomist and zoologist (b. 1791)

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

• 1901 - Birth of Robert Van de Graaff, American physicist and inventor (d. 1967)

• 1917 - Birth of David Bohm, American-born physicist, philosopher, and neuropsychologist (d. 1992)

• 1951 - The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for the first time. The electricity powered four light bulbs

• 1956 - Death of Ramon Carrillo, Argentine neuroscientist and Public Health minister (b. 1906)

• 1998 - Death of Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, British scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1916)

December 21:

• 1805 - Birth of Thomas Graham, British chemist (d. 1869)

• 1824 - Death of James Parkinson, English physician, geologist, paleontologist, and political activist (b. 1755)

• 1878 - Birth of Jan Łukasiewicz, Polish philosopher and mathematician (d. 1956)

• 1889 - Birth of Sewall Wright, American biologist (d. 1988)

• 1889 - Friedrich August von Quenstedt, German geologist (b. 1809)

• 1890 - Birth of Hermann Joseph Muller, American geneticist and Nobel laureate (d. 1967)

• 1968 - Apollo program: Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At 2h:50m:37s Mission elapsed time (MES), the crew performs the first ever manned Trans Lunar Injection and become the first humans to leave Earth's gravity

• 2004 - Death of Autar Singh Paintal, Indian medical scientist (b. 1925)

December 22:

• 1660 - Death of André Tacquet, Flemish mathematician (b. 1612)

• 1765 - Birth of Johann Friedrich Pfaff, German mathematician (d. 1825)

• 1805 - Birth of John Obadiah Westwood, British entomologist (d. 1893)

• 1819 - Birth of Pierre Ossian Bonnet, French mathematician (d. 1892)

• 1828 - Death of William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist (b. 1766)

• 1853 - Birth of Evgraf Fedorov, Russian mathematician (d. 1919)

• 1867 - Death of Jean-Victor Poncelet, French mathematician (b. 1788)

• 1869 - Birth of Dmitri Egorov, Russian mathematician (d. 1931)

• 1872 - Birth of Camille Guérin, French veterinarian and bacteriologist (d. 1961)

• 1887 - Birth of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Indian mathematician (d. 1920)

• 1898 - Birth of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock, Russian physicist (d. 1974)

• 1903 - Birth of Haldan Keffer Hartline, American physiologist, Nobel laureate (d. 1983)

December 23:

• 1722 - Death of Pierre Varignon, French mathematician (b. 1654)

• 1732 - Birth of Richard Arkwright, English industrialist and inventor (d. 1792)

• 1805 - Death of Pehr Osbeck, Swedish explorer and naturalist (b. 1723)

• 1822 - Birth of Wilhelm Bauer, German engineer (d. 1875)

• 1846 - Death of Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent, French naturalist (b. 1780)

• 1854 - Birth of Henry B. Guppy, British botanist (d. 1926)

• 1911 - Birth of Niels Kaj Jerne, English-born immunologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1994)

• 1912 - Death of Otto Schoetensack, German anthropologist (b. 1850)

• 1931 - Death of Wilson Bentley, American scientist (b. 1865)

• 1943 - Birth of Mikhail Gromov, Russian-born mathematician

• 1954 - The first human kidney transplant is performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts

December 24:

• 1724 - Birth of Johann Conrad Ammann, Swiss physician and naturalist (d. 1811)

• 1754 - Birth of George Crabbe, British poet and naturalist (d. 1832)

• 1761 - Birth of Jean-Louis Pons, French astronomer (d. 1831)

• 1818 - Birth of James Prescott Joule, British physicist (d. 1889)

• 1868 - Death of Adolphe d'Archiac, French paleontologist and geologist (b. 1802)

• 1872 - Death of William John Macquorn Rankine, British physician and engenier (b. 1820)

• 1906 - Radio: Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio broadcast; consisting of a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech

• 1914 - Death of John Muir, British naturalist (b. 1838)

December 25:

• 1642 - Birth of Sir Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician (d. 1727)

• 1763 - Birth of Claude Chappe, French telecommunications pioneer (d. 1805)

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

• 1868 - Death of Linus Yale, Jr., American mechanical engineer and inventor (b. 1821)

• 1876 - Birth of Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, Nobel laureate (d. 1959)

• 1904 - Birth of Gerhard Herzberg, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)

• 1906 - Birth of Ernst Ruska, Nobel laureate (d. 1988)

• 1993 - Death of Pierre Victor Auger, French physicist (b. 1899)

December 26:

• 1624 - Death of Simon Marius, German astronomer (b. 1573)

• 1780 - Birth of Mary Fairfax Somerville, British mathematician (d. 1872)

• 1791 - Birth of Charles Babbage, English mathematician and inventor (d. 1871)

• 1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium

• 1933 - FM radio is patented

• 1937 - Birth of John Horton Conway, British mathematician

December 27:

• 1571 - Birth of Johannes Kepler, German astronomer (d. 1630)

• 1654 - Birth of Jacob Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d. 1705)

• 1773 - Birth of George Cayley, English scientist, inventor, and politician (d. 1857)

• 1822 - Birth of Louis Pasteur, French scientist (d. 1895)

• 1831 - Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate the theory of evolution

• 1845 - Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Williamson Long in Jefferson, Georgia

• 1900 - Death of William George Armstrong, English inventor, industrialist, and engineer (b. 1810)

• 1914 - Death of Charles Martin Hall, American chemist and inventor (b. 1863)

• 1938 - Death of Calvin Bridges, American geneticist (b. 1889)

• 1974 - Death of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock, Russian physicist (b. 1898)

December 28:

• 1612 - Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star

• 1663 - Death of Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian mathematician and physicist (b. 1618)

• 1708 - Death of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, French botanist (b. 1656)

• 1795 - Death of Eugenio Espejo, Ecuadorian scientist (b. 1747)

• 1882 - Birth of Arthur Stanley Eddington, British astronomer (d. 1944)

• 1898 - Birth of Carl-Gustaf Rossby, Swedish meteorologist (d. 1957)

• 1903 - Birth of John von Neumann, Hungarian-born mathematician (d. 1957)

• 1919 - Death of Johannes Rydberg, Swedish physicist (b. 1854)

• 1944 - Birth of Kary Mullis, American chemist, Nobel laureate

• 1981 - The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born in Norfolk, Virginia

• 2001 - Death of Samuel A. Goldblith, American food scientist (b. 1919)

December 29:

• 1689 - Death of Thomas Sydenham, English physician (b. 1624)

• 1731 - Death of Brook Taylor, English mathematician (b. 1685)

• 1737 - Death of Joseph Saurin, French mathematician (b. 1659)

• 1796 - Birth of Johann Christian Poggendorff, German physicist (d. 1877)

• 1800 - Birth of Charles Goodyear, American inventor (d. 1860)

• 1856 - Birth of Thomas Joannes Stieltjes, Dutch mathematician (d. 1894)

• 1891 - Death of Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician (b. 1823)

• 2004 - Death of Julius Axelrod, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1912)

December 30:

• 1552 - Birth of Simon Forman, English occultist and astrologer (d. 1611)

• 1644 - Death of Jan Baptist van Helmont, Flemish chemist (b. 1577)

• 1691 - Death of Robert Boyle, Irish scientist (b. 1627)

• 1924 - Edwin Hubble announces the existence of other galaxies

• 1934 - Birth of John Norris Bahcall, American physicist (d. 2005)

• 1947 - Death of Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician and philosopher (b. 1861)

• 1993 - Death of Giuseppe Occhialini, Italian physicist (b. 1907)

• 1994 - Death of Dmitri Ivanenko, Russian physicist (b. 1904)

December 31:

• 1514 – Birth of Andreas Vesalius, Flemish anatomist (d. 1564)

• 1610 – Death of Ludolph van Ceulen, German mathematician (b. 1540)

• 1679 – Death of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Italian physiologist and physicist (b. 1608)

• 1719 – Death of John Flamsteed, English astronomer (b. 1646)

• 1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time

• 1894 – Death of Thomas Joannes Stieltjes, Dutch mathematician (b. 1856)

• 1905 – Death of Alexander Popov, Russian physicist (b. 1859)

• 1937 – Birth of Avram Hershko, Israeli biologist, Nobel laureate

• 2003 – Death of Arthur R. von Hippel German-born physicist (b. 1898)