1683 in science

The year 1683 in science and technology involved some significant events.

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Geography

• Vincenzo Coronelli completes terrestrial and celestial globes for Louis XIV of France.

Biology

• September 17 – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to the Royal Society of London describing "animalcules" – the first known description of protozoa.[1]

Mathematics

• Based on his discovery of the resultant, Seki Takakazu starts to develop elimination theory in the Kai-fukudai-no-hō (解伏題之法,); and to express the resultant, he develops the notion of the determinant.[2]
• Jacob Bernoulli discovers the mathematical constant e.[3]

Medicine

• Dutch physician Willem ten Rhijne publishes Dissertatio de Arthritide: Mantissa Schematica: De Acupunctura in London, introducing the West to acupuncture and moxibustion.

Technology

• Vauban's manual on fortification, Le Directeur-Général des fortifications, begins publication at The Hague.

Institutions

• May 24 – The Ashmolean Museum opens in Broad Street, Oxford (England) as the world's first purpose-built university museum,[4] including accommodation for the teaching of natural philosophy and a chemistry laboratory. Naturalist Dr. Robert Plot is the first keeper and first professor of chemistry.
• October 15 – First meeting of the Dublin Philosophical Society, established by William Molyneux.[5][6][7]

Births

• February 28 – Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, French physicist (died 1757)
• December 23 – François Nicole, French mathematician (died 1758)
• Approximate date
  • Giovanni Poleni, Italian mathematician and physicist (died 1761)
  • Edmund Weaver, English astronomer (died 1748)

Deaths

• November 10
  • John Collins, English mathematician (born 1625)
  • Robert Morison, Scottish botanist (born 1620)

References

1. Anderson, Douglas. "Wrote Letter 39 of 1683-09-17 (AB 76) to Francis Aston". Lens on Leeuwenhoek. Archived from the original on 2016-08-20. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
2. Eves, Howard (1990). An Introduction to the History of Mathematics (6th ed.). Philadelphia: Saunders College. p. 405. ISBN 0-03-029558-0.
3. Boyer, Carl; Merzbach, Uta (1991). A History of Mathematics (2nd ed.). Wiley. p. 419.
4. "Ashmolean Museum". The Invention of Museum Anthropology. Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum. 2012. Retrieved 2019-05-25.
5. Jones, Greta; Malcolm, Elizabeth (1999). Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland, 1650–1940. Cork University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-85918-230-7.
6. Wilde, W. R. (1844–47). "Memoir of the Dublin Philosophical Society of 1683". Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. 3: 160–76. JSTOR 20489545.
7. Spearman, T. D. (1992). "400 Years of Mathematics". Trinity College Dublin. Retrieved 2014-01-09.