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| 1546 |
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| Georgius Agricola (Georg Bauer) (1494–1555) applied observation rather than mere speculation to the study of rocks, publishing De natura fossilium, an early handbook of mineralogy, and De re metallica (1556), which dealt with mining and metallurgy. | 1 |
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| 1546 |
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| Girolamo Fracastoro (?1483–1553) developed the theory that contagion (infectious disease) is caused by a living agent transmitted from person to person. | 2 |
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| 1551–87 |
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| The Swiss Naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516–65) amassed in the first great Renaissance encyclopedia, Historia animalium, ancient and contemporary knowledge of the animal kingdom. | 3 |
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| 1572 |
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| The Danish astronomer TYCHO BRAHE (1546–1601) observed a bright new star, a supernova, and determined that it was beyond the moon, thereby destroying the prevailing Aristotelian notion that no change occurred in celestial regions. Through systematic observation, using instruments designed by himself, Brahe accumulated very accurate data on planetary and lunar positions and produced the first modern star catalog. | 4 |
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| 1583 |
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| The Italian botanist Andrea Cesalpino (1519–1603) compiled the first modern classification of plants based on a comparative study of forms; he also described as a theory the circulation of the blood. | 5 |
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| 1585 |
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| Simon Stevin (1548–1620) published La disme, introducing decimal fractions into arithmetic. A year later he published treatises on statics and hydrostatics. The work on statics gave a mathematical proof of the law of the lever, elegantly proved the law of the inclined plane, and showed that two unequal weights fall through the same distance in the same time. | 6 |
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| 1591 |
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| François Viète (Vieta) (1540–1603) introduced literal notation in algebra, that is, the systematic use of letters to represent both coefficients and unknown quantities in algebraic equations. | 7 |
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| c. 1600 |
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| Dutch lens-grinders in Middleburg are thought to have constructed the first refracting telescope and the compound microscope. | 8 |
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| 1600 |
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| William Gilbert (1540–1603) provided in De magnete a methodical experimental study of the electric and magnetic properties of bodies and established that the earth itself is a magnet. | 9 |
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| 1603 |
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| Foundation of the Accademia dei Lincei, one of the earliest learned societies, at Rome. | 10 |
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| 1609 |
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| The German astronomer JOHANNES KEPLER (1571–1630), much influenced by Copernicus and later Tycho Brahe's assistant, announced in Astronomia nova his first two laws of planetary motion: planets move in ellipses with the sun in one focus; the radius vector from the sun to a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times. In Harmonices mundi (1619) he added his third law: the squares of the periods of revolution of all planets are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. | 11 |
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| 1610 |
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| GALILEO GALILEI (1564–1642), in Sidereus nuncius, revealed the results of the first telescopic observations of celestial phenomena. He used these observations to destroy the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology and to argue for the plausibility of the Copernican system. | 12 |
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