Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/February

Selected anniversaries in February

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

February 1:

• 1462 – Birth of Johannes Trithemius, German cryptographer (d. 1516)
• 1897 – Death of Constantin von Ettingshausen, Austrian geologist (b. 1826)
• 1903 – Death of George Gabriel Stokes, Irish physicist (b. 1819)
• 1918 – Russia adopts the Gregorian calendar
• 1958 – Death of Clinton Davisson, American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1888)
• 1970 – Death of Alfréd Rényi, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1921)
• 1976 – Death of Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1901)
• 1976 – Death of George Whipple, American scientist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1878)

February 2:

• 1522 - Birth of Lodovico Ferrari, Italian mathematician (d. 1565)

• 1621 - Birth of Johannes Schefferus, Alsatian humanist (d. 1679)

• 1661 - Death of Lucas Holstenius, German humanist (b. 1596)

• 1695 - Birth of William Borlase, English naturalist (d. 1772)

• 1704 - Death of Guillaume François Antoine, Marquis de l'Hôpital, French mathematician (b. 1661)

• 1712 - Death of Martin Lister, English naturalist and physician

• 1723 - Death of Antonio Maria Valsalva, Italian anatomist (b. 1666)

• 1768 - Death of Robert Smith, English mathematician (b. 1689)

• 1786 - Birth of Jacques Philippe Marie Binet, French mathematician (d. 1856)

• 1802 - Birth of Jean Baptiste Boussingault, French chemist (d. 1887)

• 1829 - Birth of Alfred Brehm, German zoologist (d. 1884)

• 1841 - Birth of François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist (d. 1912)

• 1842 - Birth of Yulian Vasilievich Sokhotski, Russian mathematician (d. 1927)

• 1880 - The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana

• 1893 - Birth of Cornelius Lanczos, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1974)

• 1896 - Birth of Kazimierz Kuratowski, Polish mathematician and logician (d. 1980)

• 1907 - Death of Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian chemist (b. 1834

• 1935 - Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine

• 1939 - Birth of Akbar Adibi, Iranian scientist (d. 2000)

• 1950 - Death of Constantin Carathéodory, Greek mathematician (b. 1873)

• 1957 - Death of Grigory Landsberg, Russian physicist (b. 1890)

• 1970 - Death of Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, English mathematician, writer and philosopher, Nobel laureate (b. 1872)

• 1980 - Death of William Howard Stein, Nobel laureate (b. 1911)

February 3:

• 1737 - Death of Tommaso Ceva, Italian Mathematician (b. 1648)

• 1817 - Birth of Achille Ernest Oscar Joseph Delesse, French geologist (d. 1881)

• 1832 - Death of George Crabbe, English naturalist (b. 1754)

• 1862 - Death of Jean-Baptiste Biot, French physicist (b. 1774)

• 1893 - Birth of Gaston Julia, French mathematician (d. 1978)

• 1905 - Birth of Arne Beurling, American mathematician(d. 1986)

• 1929 - Death of Agner Krarup Erlang, Danish scientist (b. 1878)

• 1956 - Death of Émile Borel, French mathematician (b. 1871)

• 1966 - The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon

• 1985 - Death of Frank Oppenheimer, American physicist (b. 1912)

February 4:

• 1508 - Death of Conrad Celtes, German humanist scholar (b. 1459)

• 1725 - Birth of Dru Drury, English entomologist (d. 1804)

• 1774 - Death of Charles Marie de La Condamine, French mathematician and geographer (b. 1701)

• 1778 - Birth of A. P. de Candolle, Swiss botanist (d. 1841)

• 1846 - Birth of Nikolay Umov, Russian physicist (d. 1915)

• 1859 - The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt

• 1875 - Birth of Ludwig Prandtl, German physicist (d. 1953)

• 1896 - Birth of Friedrich Hund, German physicist (d. 1997)

• 1906 - Birth of Clyde Tombaugh, American astronomer (d. 1997)

• 1928 - Death of Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1853)

• 1936 - Radium E becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically

• 1957 - The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), logs 60,000 nmi (110,000 km), matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

• 1974 - Death of Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian physicist (b. 1894)

February 5:

• 1608 - Birth of Gaspar Schott, German mathematician (d. 1666)

• 1790 - William Cullen, Scottish physician and chemist (b. 1710)

• 1795 - Birth of Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger, Austrian mineralogist (d. 1871)

• 1840 - Birth of John Boyd Dunlop, Scottish inventor (d. 1921)

• 1840 - Birth of Hiram Stevens Maxim, American inventor (Maxim gun) (d. 1916)

• 1910 - Birth of Charles Leblond, Canadian Cell Biologist (d. 2007)

• 1915 - Birth of Robert Hofstadter, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1990)

• 1922 - Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, Croatian inventor (b. 1871)

• 1924 - The Royal Greenwich Observatory begin broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips"

• 1937 - Birth of Wang Xuan, Chinese scientist (d. 2006)

• 1977 - Oskar Klein, Swedish physicist (b. 1894)

February 6:

• 1617 - Death of Prospero Alpini, Italian scientist (b. 1553)

• 1695 - Birth of Nicolaus II Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d. 1726)

• 1744 - Birth of Pierre-Joseph Desault, French anatomist and surgeon (d. 1795)

• 1833 - Death of Pierre André Latreille, French entomologist (b. 1762)

• 1853 - Birth of Ignacij Klemenčič, Slovenian physicist (d. 1901)

• 1916 - Birth of John Crank, British mathematician (d. 2006)

• 1927 - Birth of Gerard K. O'Neill, American physicist (d. 1992)

• 1950 - Death of Georges Imbert, Alsatian chemist (b. 1884)

• 1959 - Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit

• 1991 - Death of Salvador Luria, Italian biologist, Nobel laureate (b. 1912)

• 1998 - Death of Haroun Tazieff, French vulcanologist and geologist (b. 1914)

• 2002 - Death of Max Perutz, Austrian molecular biologist, Nobel laureate (b. 1914)

February 7:

• 1736 - Death of Stephen Gray, English astronomer and scientist (b. 1666)

• 1877 - Birth of Godfrey Harold Hardy, English mathematician (d. 1947)

• 1889 - Birth of Harry Nyquist, important contributor to information theory (d. 1976)

• 1897 - Death of Galileo Ferraris, Italian physicist (b. 1847)

• 1926 - Birth of John Frank Davidson, British chemical engineer and Royal Medal holder

• 1958 - Birth of Matt Ridley, British science writer

• 1960 - Death of Igor Kurchatov, Russian physicist (b. 1903)

• 1979 - Pluto moves inside Neptune's orbit for the first time since either was discovered

February 8:

• 1677 - Birth of Jacques Cassini, French astronomer (d. 1756)

• 1700 - Birth of Daniel Bernoulli, Dutch-born mathematician (d. 1782)

• 1807 - Birth of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, English sculptor and naturalist (d. 1889)

• 1834 - Birth of Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian chemist (d. 1907)

• 1856 - Death of Agostino Bassi, Italian entomologist (b. 1773)

• 1906 - Birth of Chester Carlson, American physicist and inventor (d. 1968)

• 1907 - Death of Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom, Dutch chemist (b. 1854)

• 1957 - Death of Walther Bothe, German physicist and inventor, Nobel laureate (b. 1891)

• 1957 - Death of John von Neumann, Hungarian-born mathematician and physicist (b. 1903)

• 1969 - Allende meteorite falls near Pueblito de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico

• 1975 - Death of Robert Robinson, British chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1886)

February 9:

• 1752 - Death of Fredric Hasselquist, Swedish naturalist (b. 1722)

• 1775 - Birth of Farkas Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1856)

• 1781 - Birth of Johann Baptist von Spix, German scientist (d. 1826)

• 1789 - Birth of Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, German inventor of the stenography (d. 1849)

• 1865 - Birth of Erich von Drygalski, German geographer, geophysicist, and polar scientist (d. 1949)

• 1870 - The U.S. Weather Bureau was established

• 1880 - Birth of Lipót Fejér, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1959)

• 1910 - Birth of Jacques Monod, French biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1976)

• 1925 - Birth of Burkhard Heim, German physicist (d. 2001

• 1954 - Birth of Kevin Warwick, Cyborg Scientist

• 1963 - Birth of Brian Greene, American physicist

• 1979 - Death of Dennis Gabor, Hungarian physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1900)

• 1986 - Comet Halley reaches perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, during its second visit to the inner Solar System in the 20th century

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

February 10:

• 1499 - Birth of Thomas Platter, Swiss humanist (d. 1582)
• 1785 - Birth of Claude-Louis Navier, French physicist (d. 1936)
• 1846 - Birth of Ira Remsen, American chemist (d. 1927)
• 1865 - Death of Heinrich Lenz, German physicist (b. 1804)
• 1891 - Death of Sofia Kovalevskaya, Russian mathematician (b. 1850)
• 1923 - Death of Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1845)
• 1944 - Death of Eugène Michel Antoniadi, Greek astronomer, a crater on Mars and the Antoniadi crater on the Moon were named in his honor (b. 1870)
• 1996 - The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov for the first time

February 11:

• 1380 - Birth of Gianfrancesco Poggio Bracciolini, Italian humanist (d. 1459)

• 1626 - Death of Pietro Cataldi, Italian mathematician (b. 1552

• 1657 - Birth of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientist and man of letters (d. 1757)

• 1800 - Birth of William Henry Fox Talbot, English photographer and inventor (d. 1877)

• 1808 - Anthracite coal is first burned as fuel, experimentally

• 1809 - Robert Fulton took out a patent for improvements to steamboat navigation

• 1839 - Birth of Josiah Willard Gibbs, American physicist (d. 1903)

• 1868 - Death of Léon Foucault, French astronomer (b. 1819)

• 1898 - Birth of Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-born physicist (d. 1964)

• 1923 - Death of Wilhelm Killing, German mathematician (b. 1847)

• 1931 - Death of Charles Algernon Parsons, British inventor (b. 1854)

• 1938 - BBC Television produces the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Capek play R.U.R., which coined the term "robot"

• 1973 - Death of Hans D Jensen, German physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1907)

• 1976 - Death of Alexander Lippisch, German scientist (b. 1894)

• 1978 - Death of James B Conant, American chemist and university president (b. 1893)

• 1991 - Death of Robert W. Holley, American biochemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1922)

February 12:

• 1612 - Death of Christopher Clavius, German astronomer (b. 1538)
• 1637 - Birth of Jan Swammerdam, Dutch biologist (d. 1680)
• 1777 - Birth of Bernard Courtois, French chemist (d. 1838)
• 1785 - Birth of Pierre Louis Dulong, French physicist (d. 1838)
• 1788 - Birth of Carl Reichenbach, German chemist and philosopher (d. 1869)
• 1791 - Birth of Peter Cooper, American Industrialist, inventor and philanthropist (d. 1883)
• 1799 - Death of Lazzaro Spallanzani, Italian biologist (b. 1729)
• 1804 - Birth of Heinrich Lenz, German physicist (d. 1865)
• 1809 - Birth of Charles Darwin, English naturalist (d. 1882)
• 1908 - Birth of Jacques Herbrand, French logician and mathematician (d. 1931)
• 1912 - The Republic of China adopts the Gregorian calendar
• 1916 - Death of Richard Dedekind, German mathematician (b. 1831)
• 1918 - Birth of Julian Schwinger, American physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1994)
• 1958 - Death of Douglas Hartree, English mathematical physicist (b. 1897)

February 13:

• 1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition
• 1672 - Birth of Étienne François Geoffroy, French chemist (d. 1731)
• 1743 - Birth of Joseph Banks, English botanist and naturalist (d. 1820)
• 1787 - Death of Ruđer Bošković, Croatian scientist and diplomat (b. 1711)
• 1805 - Birth of Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, German mathematician (d. 1859)
• 1880 - Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect
• 1910 - Birth of William Shockley, American physicist and eugenicist, Nobel Laureate (d. 1989)
• 1956 - Death of Jan Łukasiewicz, Polish mathematician (b. 1878)
• 1960 - Nuclear testing: France tests its first atomic bomb
• 1992 - Death of Nikolay Bogolyubov, Russian mathematician (b. 1909)
• 1997 - Death of Mark Krasnosel'skii, Russian–Ukrainian mathematician (b. 1920)
• 2004 - The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093
• 2005 - Death of Emilios T. Harlaftis, Greek astrophysicist (b. 1965)

February 14:

• 1468 - Birth of Johann Werner, German mathematician (d. 1522)

• 1838 - Birth of Margaret E. Knight, American inventor, famous as female Thomas Edison, (d. 1914)

• 1848 - Birth of Benjamin Baillaud, French astronomer (d. 1934)

• 1869 - Birth of Charles Wilson, Scottish physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1959)

• 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray

• 1894 - Death of Eugène Charles Catalan, Belgian mathematician (b. 1814)

• 1898 - Birth of Fritz Zwicky, Swiss-American physicist and astronomer (d. 1974)

• 1918 - The Soviet Union adopts the Gregorian calendar (on 1 February according to the Julian calendar)

• 1904 - Birth of Charles Oatley, Professor of electrical engineering, (scanning electron microscope), (d. 1996)

• 1917 - Birth of Herbert A. Hauptman, American mathematician, Nobel Prize Laureate

• 1943 - Death of David Hilbert, German mathematician (b. 1862)

• 1961 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California

• 1975 - Death of Julian Huxley, British biologist (b. 1887)

• 1989 - Death of James Bond, American ornithologist (b. 1900)

February 15:

• 1564 - Birth of Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and physicist (d. 1642)

• 1809 - Birth of Cyrus McCormick, American inventor (d. 1884)

• 1809 - Birth of André Dumont, Belgian geologist (d. 1857)

• 1847 - Death of Germinal Pierre Dandelin, Belgian mathematician (b. 1794)

• 1849 - Death of Pierre François Verhulst, Belgian mathematician (b. 1804)

• 1861 - Birth of Charles Édouard Guillaume, French physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1938)

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

• 1873 - Birth of Hans von Euler-Chelpin, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1964)

• 1946 - ENIAC (for "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer"), the first general-purpose electronic computer, is unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania

• 1959 - Death of Owen Willans Richardson, British physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1879)

• 1988 - Death of Richard Feynman, American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1918)

• 1999 - Death of Henry Way Kendall, American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1926)

• 2001 - First draft of the complete Human Genome is published in Nature

February 16:

• 1497 - Birth of Philip Melanchthon, German humanist and reformer (d. 1560)
• 1531 - Death of Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1452)
• 1698 - Birth of Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician (d. 1758)
• 1727 - Birth of Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Austrian scientist (d. 1817)
• 1822 - Birth of Sir Francis Galton, English explorer and biologist (d. 1911)
• 1824 - Birth of Peter Kosler, Slovenian cartographer and geographer (d. 1879)
• 1834 - Birth of Ernst Haeckel, German zoologist and philosopher (d. 1919)
• 1848 - Birth of Hugo de Vries, Dutch botanist (d. 1935)
• 1891 - Birth of Hans F. K. Günther, German eugenicist (d. 1967)
• 1937 - Wallace H. Carothers receives a patent for nylon
• 1937 - Birth of Yuri Manin, Russian mathematician
• 1980 - Death of Erich Hückel, German physicist (b. 1895)
• 1997 - Death of Chien-Shiung Wu, Chinese-American physicist (b. 1912)

February 17:

• 1680 - Death of Jan Swammerdam, Dutch biologist (b. 1637)

• 1723 - Birth of Tobias Mayer, German astronomer (d. 1762)

• 1753 - February 17 is followed by March 1 as Sweden moves from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar

• 1792 - Birth of Karl Ernst von Baer, German biologist (d. 1876)

• 1874 - Death of Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian mathematician (b. 1796)

• 1888 - Birth of Otto Stern, German physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1969)

February 18:

• 901 - Death of Thabit ibn Qurra, Arab astronomer and mathematician (b. 826)

• 1535 - Death of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, astrologer and alchemist (b. 1486)

• 1745 - Birth of Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist (d. 1827)

• 1788 - Death of John Whitehurst, English clockmaker and scientist (b. 1713)

• 1838 - Birth of Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist (d. 1916)

• 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto

• 1957 - Death of Henry Norris Russell, American astronomer (b. 1877)

• 1967 - Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist (b. 1904)

February 19:

• 1473 - Birth of Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer (d. 1543)

• 1526 - Birth of Charles de L'Ecluse, Flemish botanist (d. 1609)

• 1553 - Death of Erasmus Reinhold, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1511)

• 1660 - Birth of Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist (d. 1742)

• 1799 - Death of Jean-Charles de Borda, French mathematician, physicist, political scientist, and sailor (b. 1733)

• 1859 - Birth of Svante Arrhenius, Swedish chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1927)

• 1878 - The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison

• 1897 - Death of Karl Weierstraß, German mathematician (b. 1815)

• 1916 - Death of Ernst Mach, Austrian-Czech physicist and philosopher (b. 1838)

• 1941 - Birth of David Gross, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1943 - Birth of Tim Hunt, British biochemist, Nobel laureate

• 1956 - Birth of Roderick MacKinnon, American biologist, Nobel laureate

• 1985 - Artificial heart recipient William J. Schroeder becomes the first such patient to leave hospital

• 2002 - NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system

February 20:

• 1762 - Death of Tobias Mayer, German astronomer (b. 1723)

• 1771 - Death of Jean Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan, French geophysicist (b. 1678)

• 1844 - Birth of Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist (d. 1906)

• 1907 - Death of Henri Moissan, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)

• 1909 - Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro

• 1920 - Birth of Evgeny Dragunov, Russian weapons designer (d. 1991)

• 1972 - Death of Maria Goeppert-Mayer, German physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1906)

• 1984 - Death of Paul Dirac, British theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics (b. 1902)

• 2005 - Death of Tom Willmore, English geometer (b. 1919)

• 2007 - Death of F. Albert Cotton, American chemist (b. 1930)

February 21:

• 1788 - Death of Johann Georg Palitzsch, German astronomer (b. 1723)

• 1804 - The first self-propelling steam locomotive makes its outing at the Pen-y-Darren ironworks in Wales

• 1893 - Thomas Edison receives two U.S. patents for a "Cut Out for Incandescent Electric Lamps" and for a "Stop Device"

• 1895 - Birth of Carl Peter Henrik Dam Danish biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1976)

• 1901 - Death of George Francis FitzGerald, Irish mathematician (b. 1851)

• 1926 - Death of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1853)

• 1938 - Death of George Ellery Hale, American astronomer (b. 1868)

• 1947 - In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America

• 1953 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the structure of the DNA molecule

• 1999 - Death of Gertrude B. Elion, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1918)

• 2002 - Death of Harold Furth, Austrian-born physicist (b. 1939)

February 22:

• 1500 - Birth of Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, Italian humanist (d. 1564)

• 1632 - Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published

• 1731 - Death of Frederik Ruysch, Dutch physician and anatomist (b. 1638)

• 1796 - Birth of Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian mathematician (d. 1874)

• 1817 - Birth of Carl Wilhelm Borchardt, German mathematician (d. 1880)

• 1824 - Birth of Pierre Janssen, French astronomer (d. 1907)

• 1849 - Birth of Nikolay Yakovlevich Sonin, Russian mathematician (d. 1915)

• 1857 - Birth of Heinrich Hertz, German physicist (d. 1894)

• 1875 - Death of Sir Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist (b. 1797)

• 1878 - Birth of Walter Ritz, Swiss physicist (d. 1909)

• 1879 - Birth of Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted, Danish physical chemist (d. 1947)

• 1880 - Birth of Frigyes Riesz, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1956)

• 1902 - Birth of Fritz Strassmann, German physicist (d. 1980)

• 1962 - Birth of Steve Irwin, Australian herpetologist (d. 2006)

February 23:

• 1583 - Birth of Jean-Baptiste Morin, French scientist (d. 1656)

• 1603 - Death of Andrea Cesalpino, Italian philosopher, physician, and botanist (b. 1519)

• 1855 - Death of Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (b. 1777)

• 1922 - Death of Albert Victor Bäcklund, Swedish physicist (b. 1845)

• 1941 - Plutonium was first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg

• 1987 - Supernova 1987a: A supernova is seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud

February 24:

• 1304 - Birth of Ibn Battuta, Arabian explorer

• 1463 - Birth of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Italian humanist (d. 1494)

• 1582 - Pope Gregory XIII announces the Gregorian calendar

• 1588 - Death of Johann Weyer, Dutch physician and occultist

• 1709 - Birth of Jacques de Vaucanson, French inventor (d. 1782)

• 1779 - Death of Paul Daniel Longolius, German encyclopedist (b. 1704)

• 1799 - Death of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German physicist (b. 1742)

• 1810 - Death of Henry Cavendish, English scientist (b. 1756)

• 1812 - Death of Étienne-Louis Malus, French physicist and mathematician (b. 1775)

• 1839 - William Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel

• 1856 - Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician (b. 1792)

• 1866 - Birth of Pyotr Nikolaevich Lebedev, Russian physicist (d. 1912)

• 1925 - A thermite (magnesium) bomb is used for the first time to break up a 250,000-ton ice jam clogging the St. Lawrence River near [[Waddington (town), New York|Waddington, New York]

• 1946 - Birth of Grigory Margulis, Russian mathematician

February 25:

• 1682 - Birth of Giovanni Battista Morgagni, Italian anatomist (d. 1771)

• 1836 - Samuel Colt receives an American patent for the Colt revolver

• 1919 - Birth of Karl H. Pribram, Austrian neuroscientist

• 1953 - Death of Sergei Winogradsky, Russian scientist (b. 1856)

• 1971 - The first unit of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, first commercial nuclear power station in Canada, goes online

• 1971 - Death of Theodor Svedberg, Swedish chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1884)

• 1999 - Death of Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1912)

February 26:

• 1638 - Death of Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, French mathematician (b. 1681)

• 1786 - Birth of François Arago, French mathematician (d. 1853)

• 1799 - Birth of Émile Clapeyron, French engineer and physicist (d. 1864)

• 1814 - Birth of Charles Joseph Sainte-Claire Deville, French geologist (d. 1876)

• 1866 - Birth of Herbert Henry Dow, American chemical industrialist (d. 1930)

• 1903 - Birth of Giulio Natta, Italian chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1979)

• 1931 - Death of Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1847)

• 1935 - The Daventry Experiment, Robert Watson-Watt carries out a demonstration near Daventry which leads directly to the development of RADAR in the United Kingdom

• 1946 - Birth of Ahmed H. Zewail, Egyptian chemist, Nobel laureate

• 1952 - United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill announces that his nation has an atomic bomb

February 27:

• 1887 - Death of Alexander Borodin, Russian composer and chemist (b. 1833)

• 1899 - Birth of Charles Best, Canadian medical scientist (d. 1978)

• 1904 - Birth of Yulii Khariton, Russian physicist (d. 1996)

• 1926 - Birth of David H. Hubel, Canadian neuroscientist, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1930 - Birth of Paul von Ragué Schleyer, American chemist

• 1940 - Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14

• 1942 - Birth of Robert H. Grubbs, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1989 - Death of Konrad Lorenz, Austrian zoologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1903)

February 28:

• 1552 - Birth of Joost Bürgi, Swiss clockmaker (d. 1632)

• 1675 - Birth of Guillaume Delisle, French cartographer (d. 1726)

• 1683 - Birth of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French scientist (d. 1757)

• 1700 - Today is followed by March 1 in Sweden, thus creating the Swedish calendar

• 1704 - Birth of Louis Godin, French astronomer (d. 1760)

• 1840 - Birth of Henri Duveyrier, French explorer (d. 1892)

• 1857 - Death of André Dumont, Belgian geologist (b. 1809)

• 1878 - Birth of Pierre Fatou, French mathematician (d. 1929)

• 1901 - Birth of Linus Pauling, American chemist and activist, Nobel laureate (d. 1994)

• 1915 - Birth of Peter Medawar, Brazilian-born scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1987)

• 1930 - Birth of Leon Neil Cooper, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1932 - Death of Guillaume Bigourdan, French astronomer (b. 1851)

• 1935 - Nylon is invented by Wallace Carothers

• 1936 - Death of Charles Nicolle, French bacteriologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1866)

• 1939 - Birth of Daniel C. Tsui, Chinese-born physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1948 - Birth of Steven Chu, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1953 - James D. Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April Nature (pub. April 2)