Portal:History of science

Title page of the 1859 edition

On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. It was published on 24 November 1859. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection although Lamarckism was also included as a mechanism of lesser importance. The book presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had collected on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.

Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream. (Full article...)

1675 image of a Chinese astronomer with an elaborate armillary sphere. In the 17th century, Chinese astronomers collaborated extensively with Jesuit scholars, who brought the Copernican and Tychonic systems from Europe.

...that the word scientist was coined in 1833 by philosopher and historian of science William Whewell?

...that biogeography has its roots in investigations of the story of Noah's Ark?

...that the idea of the "Scientific Revolution" dates only to 1939, with the work of Alexandre Koyré?

Detail from Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife by Jacques-Louis David

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (/ləˈvwɑːzieɪ/ lə-VWAH-zee-ay; French: [ɑ̃twan lɔʁɑ̃ də lavwazje]; 26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794), also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution, was a French nobleman and chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology.

It is generally accepted that Lavoisier's great accomplishments in chemistry stem largely from his changing the science from a qualitative to a quantitative one. Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He named oxygen (1778), recognizing it as an element, and also recognized hydrogen as an element (1783), opposing the phlogiston theory. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same. His wife and laboratory assistant, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, became a renowned chemist in her own right. (Full article...)

• 1553 – Birth of Prospero Alpini, Italian physician and botanist (d. 1617)

• 1616 – Birth of John Wallis, English mathematician (d. 1703)

• 1644 – Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship, and written by John Milton is published

• 1783 – Death of Yoriyuki Arima, Japanese mathematician (b. 1714)

• 1820 – Birth of Isaac Todhunter, British mathematician (d. 1884)

• 1837 – Birth of Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1923)

• 1887 – Birth of Henry Moseley, English physicist (d. 1915)

• 1889 – The first jukebox goes into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco

• 1902 – Death of Walter Reed, American bacteriologist (b. 1851)

• 1937 – Death of Jagdish Chandra Bose, Indian physicist (b. 1858)

• 1937 – Death of George Albert Boulenger, Belgian naturalist (b. 1858)