1660 in science

The year 1660 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Events

• November 28 – At Gresham College in London, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins and Robert Moray, meet after a lecture by Wren and resolve to found "a College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning", which will become the Royal Society.

Botany

• John Ray publishes Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium in Cambridge, the first flora of an English county.

Mathematics

• The popular English-language edition by Isaac Barrow of Euclid's Elements is published in London.

Physics

• Robert Boyle publishes New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (the second edition in 1662 will contain Boyle's law).
• Robert Hooke conceives Hooke's law (but does not publish it in full until 1678).

Zoology

• Jan Goedart begins publication of Metamorphosis Naturalis in Middelburg, Zeeland, containing detailed illustrated descriptions of insect metamorphosis.

Births

• February 19 – Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist (died 1742)
• April 16 – Hans Sloane, Ulster Scots-born collector and physician (died 1753)
• March 15 – Olof Rudbeck the Younger, Swedish naturalist (died 1740)
• May 27 (bapt.) – Francis Hauksbee, English scientific instrument maker and experimentalist (died 1713)
• approx. date – Edward Lhuyd, Welsh naturalist (died 1709)
• Date unknown – Jeanne Dumée, French astronomer (born 1660)

Deaths

• May 29 – Frans van Schooten, Dutch Cartesian mathematician (born 1615)
• June 30 – William Oughtred, English mathematician who invented the slide rule (born 1574)
• Jean-Jacques Chifflet, French physician and antiquary (born 1588)
• Walter Rumsey, Welsh judge and amateur scientist (born 1584)

References