Today in History of Science, Technology, Discovery

• 1495 – Petrus Apianus, German mathematician (d. 1557)
• 1660 – Hans Sloane, British collector and physician (d. 1753)
• 1682 – John Hadley, English mathematician and inventor of the octant (d. 1744)
• 1728 – Joseph Black, Scottish chemist (d. 1799)
• 1786 – John Franklin, British navy officer and explorer (d. 1847)
• 1823 – Gotthold Eisenstein, German mathematician (d. 1852)
• 1867 – Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer (d. 1912)
• 1899 – Osman Achmatowicz, Polish chemist (d. 1988)
• 1907 – Joseph-Armand Bombardier, Canadian inventor and businessman, founder of Bombardier Inc. and invented the snowmobile (d. 1964)
• 1919 – Tom Willmore, English geometer (d. 2005)
• 1956 – David McDowell Brown, American astronaut (d. 2003)

Deaths:

• 1783 – Christian Mayer, Czech astronomer (b. 1719)
• 1788 – Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, French naturalist (b. 1707)
• 1888 – Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski, Polish physicist (b. 1845)
• 1914 – George William Hill, American astronomer (b. 1838)
• 1958 – Rosalind Franklin, British chemist (b. 1920)
• 1970 – Richard Neutra, American architect (b. 1892)
• 1972 – Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1899)
• 1998 – Alberto Calderón, Argentine mathematician (b. 1920)
• 2007 – Kevin Granata, American professor of Engineering (b. 1961)
• 2007 – Liviu Librescu, American-Romanian professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Holocaust survivor (b. 1930)
• 2007 – G. V. Loganathan, Indian-American professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (b. 1954)
• 2007 – Frank Bateson, New Zealand astronomer (b. 1909)
• 2008 – Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician and meteorologist (b. 1917)

• 1838 – Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, French scientist (d. 1912)
• 1911 – Maurice Goldhaber, Austrian-American physicist (d. 2011)
• 1927 – Samuel P. Huntington, American political scientist (d. 2008)
• 1940 – Joseph L. Goldstein, American scientist, Nobel laureate

Deaths:

• 1674 – John Graunt, English statistician (b. 1620)
• 1732 – Louis Feuillée, French explorer (b. 1660)
• 1796 – Johan Wilcke, Swedish physicist (b. 1732)
• 1802 – Erasmus Darwin, English physician and botanist (b. 1731)
• 1873 – Justus von Liebig, German chemist (b. 1803)
• 1945 – John Ambrose Fleming, English physicist and engineer (b. 1849)
• 1955 – Albert Einstein, German physicist (b. 1879)
• 1965 – Guillermo González Camarena, Mexican inventor and engineer (b. 1917)
• 1976 – Mahmoud Younis, Egyptian engineer of the Suez Canal nationalization (b. 1911)
• 1986 – Marcel Dassault, French aircraft industrialist (b.1892)
• 2002 – Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer (b. 1914)

• 702 – Jafar Sadiq, Islamic scholar (d. 765)
• 1646 – Charles Plumier, French botanist (d. 1704)
• 1745 – Philippe Pinel, French physician (d. 1826)
• 1818 – Heinrich Göbel, German mechanic and inventor (d. 1893)
• 1826 – Dinah Craik, English author (d. 1887)
• 1870 – Maulvi Abdul Haq, Pakistani scholar (d. 1961)
• 1904 – George Stibitz, American scientist (d. 1995)
• 1918 – Kai Siegbahn, Swedish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2007)
• 1927 – Karl Alexander Müller, Swiss physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1928 – Gerald S. Hawkins, English astronomer (d. 2003)
• 1955 – Don Pettit, American astronaut and engineer

Deaths:

• 1831 – John Abernethy, English surgeon (b. 1764)
• 1918 – Karl Ferdinand Braun, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1850)
• 1932 – Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician (b. 1858)
• 2003 – Bernard Katz, German biophysicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1911)

• 1592 – Wilhelm Schickard, German mathematician who invented a calculating machine (d. 1635)
• 1876 – Robert Bárány, Austrian physician, Nobel laureate (d. 1936)
• 1891 – Vittorio Jano, Italian engineer (d. 1965)
• 1891 – Harold Jeffreys, English astronomer (d. 1989)
• 1899 – Vladimir Nabokov, novelist, professor, lepidopterist [O.S. 10 April] (d. 1977)
• 1904 – J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist (d. 1967)
• 1907 – Ivan Efremov, Russian paleontologist and author (d. 1972)
• 1909 – Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian neurologist, Nobel laureate
• 1910 – Norman Steenrod, American mathematician (d. 1971)
• 1919 – Donald J. Cram, American chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2001)
• 1922 – Wolf V. Vishniac, American microbiologist (d. 1973)
• 1929 – Michael Atiyah, British-Lebanese mathematician
• 1946 – Paul Davies, English physicist, writer and broadcaster

Deaths:

• 1758 – Antoine de Jussieu, French naturalist (b. 1686)
• 1778 – James Hargreaves, English inventor (b. 1720)
• 1833 – Richard Trevithick, English inventor (b. 1771)
• 1877 – James P. Kirkwood, American civil engineer (b. 1807)
• 1893 – Chaim Aronson, Lithuanian inventor and academic (b. 1825)
• 1896 – Thomas Meik, British civil engineer (b. 1812)
• 1933 – Sir Henry Royce, British automobile manufacturer (b. 1863)
• 1945 – Wilhelm Cauer, German mathematician (b. 1900)
• 1980 – Fritz Strassmann, German physicist (b. 1902)
• 1985 – Paul H. Emmett, American chemical engineer (b. 1900)
• 1985 – Jacques Ferron, Canadian physician, author and politician (b. 1921)
• 1989 – Emilio Gino Segrè, Italian-born American physicist (b. 1905)
• 1999 – Munir Ahmad Khan, Pakistani nuclear engineer (b. 1926)
• 2005 – Philip Morrison, American physicist (b. 1915)

• 1743 – Edmund Cartwright, British inventor (d. 1823)
• 1899 – Oscar Zariski, Russian-born mathematician (d. 1986)
• 1919 – David Blackwell, African-American mathematician (d. 2010)
• 1947 – Roger D. Kornberg, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
• 1959 – Malcolm Oastler, Australian engineer

Deaths:

• 1656 – Thomas Fincke, Danish mathematician and physicist (b. 1561)
• 1945 – Ernst-Robert Grawitz, German physician (b. 1899)
• 1960 – Max von Laue, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1879)
• 1964 – Gerhard Domagk, German bacteriologist (b. 1895)
• 1967 – Vladimir Komarov, Soviet cosmonaut (b. 1927)
• 1997 – Eugene Stoner, American engineer and weapons designer (b. 1922)

• 1774 – Christian Leopold von Buch, German geologist (d. 1853)
• 1785 – John James Audubon, French-American naturalist and illustrator (d. 1851)
• 1812 – Alfred Krupp, German industrialist (d. 1887)
• 1822 – Frederick Law Olmsted, American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer (d. 1903)
• 1879 – Owen Willans Richardson, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1959)
• 1900 – Charles Richter, American geophysicist (d. 1985)
• 1917 – I.M. Pei, Chinese architect
• 1932 – Michael Smith, English chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2000)
• 1933 – Arno Allan Penzias, German physicist, Nobel laureate
• 1943 – Peter Zumthor, Swiss architect

Deaths:

• 1852 – Charles Athanase Walckenaer, French naturalist (b. 1771)
• 1920 – Srinivasa Ramanujan, Indian mathematician (b. 1887)
• 1940 – Carl Bosch, German chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1874)
• 1946 – James Larkin White, American miner, explorer, and park ranger, discoverer of Carlsbad Caverns (b. 1882)
• 1951 – Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist (b. 1868)
• 2009 – Hans Holzer, American paranormal researcher (b. 1920)

• 1765 – Sylvestre François Lacroix, French mathematician (d. 1834)
• 1819 – Ezra Abbot, American scholar (d. 1884)
• 1868 – Georgy Voronoy, Russian mathematician (d. 1908)
• 1876 – Nicola Romeo, Italian automobile engineer and entrepreneur (d. 1938)
• 1900 – Jan Oort, Dutch astronomer (d. 1992)
• 1906 – Kurt Gödel, Austrian mathematician (d. 1978)
• 1908 – Oskar Schindler, Austro-Hungarian industrialist (d. 1974)
• 1916 – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian industrialist and automobile manufacturer, created Lamborghini (d. 1993)
• 1928 – Eugene M. Shoemaker, American scientist (d. 1997)
• 1941 – Karl Barry Sharpless, American chemist, Nobel laureate
• 1963 – Marc Lacroix, Belgian biochemist

Deaths:

• 1772 – Johann Friedrich Struensee, German physician of Christian VII of Denmark (b. 1737)
• 1858 – Johannes Peter Müller, German physiologist (b. 1801)
• 1946 – Louis Bachelier, French mathematician (b. 1870)
• 1987 – Ben Linder, American engineer (b. 1959)
• 1999 – Arthur Leonard Schawlow, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1921)
• 2000 – Jerzy Einhorn, Polish-Swedish doctor, researcher and politician (b. 1925)

• 1723 – Mathurin Jacques Brisson, French naturalist (d. 1806)
• 1770 – David Thompson, Canadian explorer (d. 1857)
• 1777 – Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician (d. 1855)
• 1829 – Ferdinand von Hochstetter, Austrian geologist (d. 1884)
• 1876 – Orso Mario Corbino, Italian physicist (d. 1937)
• 1895 – Philippe Panneton, French Canadian physician, diplomat, and writer (d. 1960)
• 1905 – Sergey Nikolsky, Russian mathematician
• 1916 – Claude Shannon, American engineer and mathematician (d. 2001)
• 1945 – Michael J. Smith, American astronaut (d. 1986)

Deaths:

• 1696 – Robert Plot, Englishnaturalist (b. 1640)
• 1865 – Robert FitzRoy, English admiral and meteorologist (b. 1805)
• 1900 – Casey Jones, American train engineer (b. 1863)
• 1903 – Emily Stowe, Canadian physician and suffragist (b. 1831)
• 1943 – Beatrice Webb, English economist (b. 1858)
• 2006 – Lawrence Patrick, American bio-mechanics professor (b. 1920)

• 1802 – Heinrich Gustav Magnus, German chemist and physicist (d. 1870)
• 1843 – Elijah McCoy, Canadian-American inventor and engineer (d. 1929)
• 1894 – Joseph Henry Woodger, English biologist (d. 1981)
• 1939 – Sumio Iijima, Japanese physicist

Deaths:

• 1519 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian inventor and painter (b. 1452)
• 1927 – Ernest Starling, British physiologist (b. 1866)
• 1997 – John Eccles, Australian neurophysiologist, Nobel laureate (b. 1903)
• 2012 – Akira Tonomura, Japanese physicist, developed electron holography (b. 1942)

• 1733 – Jean-Charles de Borda, French mathematician, physicist, political scientist, and sailor (d. 1799)
• 1825 – Thomas Henry Huxley, English scientist (d. 1895)
• 1827 – John Hanning Speke, English explorer (d. 1864)
• 1916 – Richard Proenneke, American naturalist (d. 2003)
• 1923 – Stanley Biber, American physician, pioneer of transgender surgery (d. 2006)
• 1956 – Michael L. Gernhardt, American astronaut

Deaths:

• 1566 – Luca Ghini, Italian physician and botanist (b. 1490)
• 1615 – Adriaan van Roomen, Flemish mathematician (b. 1561)
• 1677 – Isaac Barrow, English mathematician (b. 1630)
• 1858 – Aimé Bonpland, French explorer and botanist (b. 1773)
• 1859 – Joseph Diaz Gergonne, French mathematician (b. 1771)
• 1972 – Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1886)