Portal:History of science

The Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904, known officially as the British National Antarctic Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since the voyage of James Clark Ross sixty years earlier (1839–1843). Organized on a large scale under a joint committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the new expedition carried out scientific research and geographical exploration in what was then largely an untouched continent. It launched the Antarctic careers of many who would become leading figures in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott who led the expedition, Ernest Shackleton, Edward Wilson, Frank Wild, Tom Crean and William Lashly.

Its scientific results covered extensive ground in biology, zoology, geology, meteorology and magnetism. The expedition discovered the existence of the only snow-free Antarctic valleys, which contains the longest river of Antarctica. Further achievements included the discoveries of the Cape Crozier emperor penguin colony, King Edward VII Land, and the Polar Plateau (via the western mountains route) on which the South Pole is located. The expedition tried to reach the South Pole travelling as far as the Farthest South mark at a reported 82°17′S. (Full article...)

Ernst Haeckel, the great populariser of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, was the first to use a literal tree of life to express evolutionary relationships based on common descent. This version comes from his 1866 General Morphology; several different versions, some highly elaborate and artistic, are found in other Haeckel works. The icon of a tree of life has been used widely since that time; some modern versions include a tangled root system to represent the effects of horizontal gene transfer and symbiogenesis early in evolutionary history.

...that the history of biochemistry spans approximately 400 years, but the word "biochemistry" in the modern sense was first proposed only in 1903, by German chemist Carl Neuberg?

...that the Great Comet of 1577 was viewed by people all over Europe, including famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and the six year old Johannes Kepler?

...that the Society for Social Studies of Science (often abbreviated as 4S) is, as its website claims, "the oldest and largest scholarly association devoted to understanding science and technology"?

Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei (/ˌɡælɪˈleɪoʊ ˌɡælɪˈleɪ/ GAL-il-AY-oh GAL-il-AY, US also /ˌɡælɪˈliːoʊ -/ GAL-il-EE-oh -⁠, Italian: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛːi]) or simply Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science.

Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and "hydrostatic balances". He was one of the earliest Renaissance developers of the thermoscope and the inventor of various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn's rings, lunar craters and sunspots. He also built an early microscope. (Full article...)

June 3

• 1657 - Death of William Harvey, English physician and natural philosopher (b. 1578)
• 1659 - Birth of David Gregory, Scottish astronomer (d. 1708)
• 1723 - Birth of Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, Italian-Austrian physician and naturalist (d. 1788)
• 1726 O.S. - Birth of James Hutton, Scottish geologist (d. 1797)
• 1769 - The transit of Venus is observed from many places in order to obtain data for measuring the distance from the Earth to the Sun, most notably by James Cook in Tahiti.
• 1873 - Birth of Otto Loewi, German-American pharmacologist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1961)
• 1879 - Birth of Raymond Pearl, American biologist (d. 1940)
• 1899 - Birth of Georg von Békésy, Hungarian biophysicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1972)
• 1924 - Birth of Torsten Wiesel, Swedish neuroscientist and Nobel Prize laureate
• 1929 - Birth of Werner Arber, Swiss microbiologist and Nobel Prize laureate
• 1969 - The science fiction television series Star Trek airs its final new episode after being canceled by NBC after a three-season run.
• 1977 - Death of Archibald Vivian Hill, English physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1886)
• 1990 - Death of Robert Noyce, American inventor (b. 1927)