Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/May 21

May 21

• 1670 - Death of Niccolo Zucchi, Italian astronomer and physicist (b. 1586)
• 1786 - Death of Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist (b. 1742)
• 1792 - Birth of Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, French scientist (d. 1843)
• 1799 - Birth of Mary Anning, British paleontologist (d. 1847)
• 1850 - Birth of Giuseppe Mercalli, Italian volcanologist (d. 1914)
• 1860 - Birth of Willem Einthoven, Dutch inventor and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927)
• 1873 - Birth of Hans Berger, German neuroscientist (d. 1941)
• 1894 - Death of August Kundt, German physicist (b. 1839)
• 1911 - Death of Williamina Fleming, Scottish-born astronomer (b. 1857)
• 1921 - Birth of Andrei Sakharov, Russian physicist and activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (declined) (d. 1989)
• 1923 - Birth of Armand Borel, Swiss mathematician (d. 2003)
• 1945 - Birth of Ernst Messerschmid, German physicist and astronaut
• 1956 - In the Pacific Ocean, Bikini Atoll is nearly obliterated by the first airborne explosion of a hydrogen bomb, part of Operation Redwing.
• 1964 - Death of James Franck, German-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1882)