1
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December 1
December 1
1. December 2025
Born in
1525: Tadeáš Hájek z Hájku, Czech astronomer and personal doctor of Rudolf II.
1743: Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist, born in Wernigerode. He discovered the elements uranium, zirconium, titanium, cerium, tellurium and strontium.
1792: Nikolai Ivanovich Lobatschewski, Russian mathematician
1911: Rudolf Eyfrig, German physicist
1934: Wilhelm Keim, German chemist
1941: Stephen A. Benton, US-American physicist
Deceased
1750: Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, German astronomer
1947: Franz Fischer, German chemist (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis), died in Munich.
1990: Rudolf Signer, Swiss chemist
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2
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December 2
December 2
2. December 2025
1901: King Camp Gillette registers a patent in Boston for his wet razor with interchangeable blade.
1409: In the presence of Margraves Friedrich and Wilhelm, the University of Leipzig, created by the emigration of German students from the Charles University in Prague, is ceremoniously opened after the semester had already begun on 24 October.
1877: The French physicist Louis Paul Cailletet succeeds in liquefying oxygen in his laboratory.
Born in
1748: Johannes Petrus Minckeleers, Dutch scientist and inventor. He is considered to be the discoverer of the city gas and the inventor of the gas lamp.
1881: Heinrich Barkhausen, German physicist. In physics and technology, the magnetic Barkhausen effect, the Barkhausen circuit, the Barkhausen short oscillation, the Barkhausen tube formula and the stability criterion of Barkhausen are named after him.
1900: Carl Wurster, German chemist and defence industry leader
1955: Ignatios Antoniadis, Greek physicist
Deceased
1594: Gerhard Mercator, Flemish-German mathematician, geographer, philosopher, theologian and cartographer
1933: Erwin Baur, German geneticist and botanist
1934: Jakob Meisenheimer, German chemist
2011: Anton Amberger, German biologist
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3
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December 3
December 3
3. December 2025
Born in
1818: Max von Pettenkofer, German chemist and hygienist
1838: Cleveland Abbe, US-American astronomer and meteorologist
1842: Ellen Swallow Richards, US chemist and ecologist
1886: Karl Manne Siegbahn, Swedish physicist
1887: Richard Becker, German physicist
1900: Richard Kuhn, Austrian chemist and Nobel Prize winner, in Vienna
Deceased
1920: William de Wiveleslie Abney, British chemist and photographer
1987: Luis Federico Leloir, Argentine chemist, Nobel Prize winner
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4
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December 4
December 4
4. December 2025
Born in
1938: George Eyre Andrews, US-American mathematician
Deceased
1131: Omar Chajjam, Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and poet
1679: Thomas Hobbes, English mathematician, state theorist and philosopher
1798: Luigi Galvani, Italian doctor and naturalist
1893: John Tyndall, Irish physicist
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5
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December 5
December 5
5. December 2025
1889: Otto Lilienthal publishes his scientific publication "Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst" in Berlin.
Born in
1547: Ubbo Emmius, German theologian, historian, pedagogue and founding rector of Groningen University
1868: Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist
1903: Cecil Frank Powell, British physicist, Nobel Prize winner
1914: Anatole Abragam, French physicist
1919: Hans Kuhn, Swiss Physicochemist
1922: Kurt Weinmann, German chemist
1932: Sheldon Lee Glashow, American physicist, Nobel Prize winner
1948: Ernst Kausen, German mathematician, computer scientist and linguist
Deceased
1624: Caspar Bauhin, Swiss anatomist and botanist
1989: Edoardo Amaldi, Italian physicist
1995: Clair Cameron Patterson, US-American Geochemist
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6
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December 6
December 6
6. December 2025
1890: French physician Charles Richet inoculates a human with immune serum for the first time.
Born in
1778: Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist and physicist, born in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat.
1920: George Porter, British chemist and Nobel laureate (1967), born in Stainford/Yorkshire.
1928: Duilio Arigoni, Swiss chemist
1941: Bertrand Halperin, US-American physicist
Deceased
1799: Joseph Black, British physicist and chemist from Scotland, discoverer of carbon dioxide, magnesium and latent heat.
1888: Samuel Earnshaw, British clergyman, physicist and mathematician
1892: Werner von Siemens, German inventor and entrepreneur
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7
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December 7
December 7
7. December 2025
1785: The German-British astronomer Wilhelm Herschel discovers the two barred spiral galaxies NGC 3003 and NGC 3395 in the constellation Small Leo.
Born
1701: Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer
1823: Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician
1830: Antonio Luigi Gaudenzio Giuseppe Cremona, Italian mathematician and politician
1859: Martin Möbius, German botanist
Deceased
1993: Wolfgang Paul, German physicist
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8
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December 8
December 8
8. December 2025
1609: The Milan Biblioteca Ambrosiana is the second library in Europe after the Oxford Bodleian Library to open its reading room to the public.
Born
1730: Johannes Hedwig, German doctor and botanist
1865: Jacques Salomon Hadamard, French mathematician
1878: Eugene Cook Bingham, US-American chemist and pioneer of modern rheology
1947: Thomas R. Cech, US biochemist, Nobel Prize winner
Deceased
1864: George Boole, British mathematician, founder of Boolean algebra
1955: Hermann Weyl, German mathematician
1969: Fritz Arndt, German-Turkish chemist
1995: Arthur Birch, Australian chemist
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9
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December 9
December 9
9. December 2025
1425: The University of Leuven is founded by a bull of Pope Martin V..
Born in
1652: August Quirinus Rivinus, German physician and botanist
1748: Claude-Louis Berthollet, French chemist and physician
1868: Fritz Haber, German chemist and Nobel Prize winner
1917: James Rainwater, US-American physicist
1919: William Lipscomb, US-American physical chemist
1926: Henry W. Kendall, US-American physicist
Deceased
1048: Al-Biruni, Persian scholar and astronomer
1798: Johann Reinhold Forster, German natural scientist and writer
1804: Leopold von Apfaltern, Jesuit and mathematician
1937: Nils Gustav Dalén, Swedish physicist and engineer
2005: Chung Kyu-Myung, Korean physicist
2012: Patrick Moore, British astronomer and author
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10
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December 10
December 10
10. December 2025
1799: France is the first country to opt for the metric system and retains the platinum original meter.
1901: The Germans Emil von Behring (medicine) and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (physics), among others, are awarded the Nobel Prizes for the first time.
Born in
1452: Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, priest, professor and manufacturer of astronomical instruments
1815: Ada Byron of Lovelace, British mathematician
1939: Alexander Fjodorowitsch Andrejew, Russian physicist
Deceased
2010: John B. Fenn, American chemist, Nobel Prize winner
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11
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December 11
December 11
11. December 2025
1738: During excavations in Herculaneum, one comes across an inscription about the theatre of the ancient city and now knows that further finds may be hidden in the lava floor.
1789: The University of North Carolina is founded in the United States.
Born in
1781: David Brewster, British physicist, inventor of the kaleidoscope
1826: August Ritter, German Professor of Mechanics and Astrophysicist
1840: Carl Johannes Thomae, German mathematician
1863: Annie Jump Cannon, US-American astronomer
1873: Josip Plemelj, Slovenian mathematician
1882: Max Born, German mathematician and physicist, Nobel Prize winner
1933: Fortunato Tito Arecchi, Italian physicist
Deceased
1945: Charles Fabry, French physicist
1978: Vincent du Vigneaud, US-American chemist, Nobel Prize winner
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12
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December 12
December 12
12. December 2025
1901: Guglielmo Marconi manages the first radio bridge across the Atlantic.
Born in
1866: Alfred Werner, Swiss chemist
1892: Herman Potočnik, Slovenian space theorist
1900: Nikolai Sergeyevich Akulov, Russian physicist
Deceased
1889: Viktor Jakowlewitsch Bunjakowski, Russian mathematician
1943: Henri Abraham, French physicist
1958: Milutin Milanković, Yugoslavian mathematician, astronomer and geophysicist
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13
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December 13
December 13
13. December 2025
1762: Empress Maria Theresa founds the Schemnitz Mining Academy for the purpose of training in forestry. Today the Technical University of Zvolen continues its tradition.
1769: Dartmouth College is founded in Hanover (New Hampshire) with donations.
1888: Heinrich Hertz informs the Berlin Academy of Sciences about the existence of electromagnetic waves in his report "Über Strahlen elektrischer Kraft". His discovery provided the decisive impetus for developments in the direction of wireless telegraphy and broadcasting.
Born in
1724: Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus, German astronomer, mathematician, physicist and natural philosopher
1780: Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, German chemist
1880: John Stenhouse, Scottish chemist
1887: George Pólya, US-American mathematician
1923: Philip Warren Anderson, US-American physicist
Deceased
1557: Niccolò Tartaglia, Italian mathematician
1603: François Viète, French lawyer and mathematician
1930: Fritz Pregl, Austrian chemist, Nobel Prize winner
1935: Victor Grignard, French chemist, Nobel Prize winner
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14
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December 14
December 14
14. December 2025
Born in
1546: Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer
1730: James Bruce, British scientist and traveller
Deceased
1891: Ferdinand von Roemer, German geologist, palaeontologist and mineralogist
1906: Jean Abraham Chrétien Oudemans, Dutch astronomer
1966: Isaak Pomeranchuk, Russian physicist
1974: Carl Wurster, German chemist, died in Frankenthal (Pfalz).
2013: John W. Cornforth, Australian chemist and Nobel Prize winner
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15
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December 15
December 15
15. December 2025
1654: Regular measurement and recording of air temperature begins in Florence.
Born
1802: János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician
1804: Wiktor Jakowlewitsch Bunjakowski, Russian mathematician
1834: Charles A. Young, American astrophysicist
1852: Antoine Henri Becquerel, French physicist and Nobel Prize winner
1884: Karl Wilhelm Rosenmund, German chemist
1916: Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, New Zealand physicist
1930: Henri Kagan, French chemist
Deceased
1958: Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian physicist and Nobel Prize winner
1981: Max Steenbeck, German physicist
1988: Leonid Andrussow, German chemical engineer
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16
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December 16
December 16
16. December 2025
1910: During an involuntary flight test with the Coanda-1910, the Romanian physicist and aerodynamicist Henri Marie Coandă discovers the Coandă effect named after him.
1957: The GDR's first nuclear reactor for research is commissioned at the Central Institute for Nuclear Research near Dresden.
Born in
1776:Johann Wilhelm Ritter, German physicist, in Samitz near Haynau
1826: Giambattista Donati, Italian astronomer
1857: Edward Barnard, US-American astronomer
1887: Johann Radon, Austrian mathematician
1928: Bruce Ames, US biochemist and molecular biologist
1969: Adam Riess, US astronomer and Nobel Prize winner
Deceased
1687: William Petty, British physicist and economist
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17
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December 17
December 17
17. December 2025
1903: The Wright brothers take off with the Wright Flyer for the first controlled powered flight.
1938: Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann discover in Berlin the nuclear fission of the uranium atom - the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy.
Born in
1706: Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician, physicist, philosopher, translator and salonière
1778: Humphry Davy, British chemist, born in Penzance. He was one of the first to introduce electricity into chemistry.
1797: Joseph Henry, US physicist
1824: John Kerr, British physicist and theologian
1842: Sophus Lie, Norwegian mathematician
1851:Friedrich Otto Schott, German chemist, born in Witten. He has rendered outstanding services to the development of glass.
1908: Willard Frank Libby, US-American physicist
1920: Kenneth E. Iverson, Canadian mathematician
Deceased
1907: William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), British physicist
1909: Nicolaas Wilhelm Pieter Rauwenhoff, Dutch biologist
1964: Victor Franz Hess, Austrian physicist and Nobel Prize winner
1973: Charles Greeley Abbot, US-American astrophysicist
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18
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December 18
December 18
18. December 2025
Born in
1856: Joseph John Thomson, British physicist, Nobel Prize winner and discoverer of the electron
1895: Walter Hieber, German chemist
Deceased
2010: Rudolf Ahlswede, German mathematician
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19
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December 19
December 19
19. December 2025
1949: In Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada University is founded, the first public university in Indonesia.
Born in
1813: Thomas Andrews, Irish physicist and chemist, born in Belfast
1845: Henri Joseph Perrotin, French astronomer
1852: Albert A. Michelson, German-US-American physicist and Nobel Prize winner
1854: Louis Brillouin, French physicist
1855: Carl Schroeter, German-Swiss botanist
1937: Barry Mazur, US-American mathematician
1961: Eric A. Cornell, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner
Deceased
1815: Benjamin Smith Barton, US-American botanist
1930: Conrad Willgerodt, German chemist
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20
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December 20
December 20
20. December 2025
1910: Ernest Rutherford can provide experimental proof of atomic nuclei when helium atoms change their path when passing through thin metal foils.
Born
1648: Tommaso Ceva, Italian poet and mathematician
1875: Francesco Cantelli, Italian mathematician
1876: Walter Sydney Adams, US-American astronomer
1890:Jaroslav Heyrovský, Czech physicochemist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (father of polarography), born in Prague.
1901: Robert Jemison Van de Graaff, US-American physicist
1908: Klaus Katterbach, German physicist
1917: David Bohm, US-American quantum physicist
Deceased
1723: August Quirinus Rivinus, German professor, astronomer, botanist and physician
1996: Carl Sagan, US-American professor, writer, astronomer, astrophysicist, exobiologist and television presenter
1998: Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, British biophysicist and Nobel Prize Laureate in Medicine
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21
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December 21
December 21
21. December 2025
1898: Marie and Pierre Curie discover the chemical element radium.
Born in
1773: Robert Brown, British botanist from Scotland
1805: Thomas Graham, British chemist, born in Glasgow. He was the first President of the Chemical Society.
Died
1840: Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann, German physicist, historian, natural scientist and insect researcher
1889: Friedrich August von Quenstedt, German geologist, palaeontologist, mineralogist and crystallographer
1990: Ivan Ljudwigowitsch Knunjanz, Russian chemist and inventor of nylon-6, died in Moscow.
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22
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December 22
December 22
22. December 2025
1666: Jean-Baptiste Colbert gathers for the first time a small group of scholars in the library of the French King Louis XIV, who from then on meet for bi-weekly working sessions. These informal meetings developed into the Académie des sciences.
1920: Regular radio broadcasts by the Königs Wusterhausen station begin in Germany.
2001: The cloned cat CC is born in the USA.
Born in
1850: Constantin Fahlberg, German industrialist and chemist, inventor of saccharin
1859: Otto Hölder, German mathematician
1887: S. Ramanujan, Indian mathematician
1898: Vladimir Alexandrovich Fock, Russian physicist
1900: John C. Slater, US-American physicist and chemist
Deceased
1828: William Hyde Wollaston, British chemist
1867: Jean-Victor Poncelet, French mathematician and physicist
2000: Herman Feshbach, US-American physicist
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23
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December 23
December 23
23. December 2025
1672: Giovanni Cassini discovers Saturn's moon Rhea.
1905: Walther Nernst presents his new heat set at the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. His essential statement is that the absolute zero point of the temperature cannot be reached.
Born
1722: Axel Frederic Cronstedt, Swedish chemist
1839: Otto Kersten, German Africa Researcher, Chemist and Geographer
Deceased
1989: Richard Rado, German mathematician
2000: Peter Kafka, German physicist
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24
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December 24
December 24
24. December 2025
1930: The physicist Manfred von Ardenne presents the first electronic television picture.
Born in
1749: Karl Gottfried Hagen, German pharmacist and scientific universal scholar
1822: Charles Hermite, French mathematician
1838: Thorvald Nicolai Thiele, Danish mathematician and astronomer
1841: Julian Treumann, German chemist
1854: Julius Elster, teacher and physicist
1932: Marshall Davidson Hatch, Australian biochemist and plant physiologist
1938: Hartmuth Arenhövel, German theoretical nuclear physicist
Deceased
1804: Martin Vahl, Norwegian-Danish botanist
1872: William John Macquorn Rankine, British physicist and engineer
1955: Carl Ramsauer, German physicist
1973: Gerard Peter Kuiper, US-American astronomer
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25
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December 25
December 25
25. December 2025
Born in
1650: Josef Langer, Czech scientist of Piarists, mathematician and astronomer
1697: John Rutty, English physician, chemist and natural scientist
1812: Francis de la Porte, comte de Castelnau, French natural scientist and explorer
1837: Vladimir Vasilyevich Markovnikov, Russian chemist
1845: Karl Ludwig Reimer, German chemist and industrialist
1851: Hermann Frasch, German-US-American chemist and engineer
1866: Max Vienna, German physicist
1876: Adolf Windaus, German chemist and biochemist, Nobel Prize winner
1883: Walter Friedrich, German biophysicist
1885: Albert Betz, German physicist, pioneer of wind power technology
1900: Antoni Zygmund, US-American mathematician
1904: Gerhard Herzberg, German chemist and physicist
1935: Jonathan Beckwith, US biochemist, microbiologist and geneticist
Deceased
1981: Heinrich Welker, German physicist
1990: John Stuart Anderson, British chemist
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26
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December 26
December 26
26. December 2025
Born in
1742: Ignaz von Born, Austrian mineralogist and geologist and leading head of the Viennese Illuminates
1818: Moritz Baumert, German physician and chemist
1825: Felix Hoppe-Seyler, German chemist and physiologist
1838: Clemens Winkler, German chemist
1851: Melchior Treub, Dutch botanist
1856: John Harper Long, US-American chemist
1861: Friedrich Engel, German mathematician
1861: Emil Wiechert, German geophysicist
1924: János D. Aczél, Hungarian-Canadian mathematician
1927: Harro Heuser, German mathematician
1937: John Horton Conway, English mathematician
Deceased
1624: Simon Marius, German astronomer
1869: Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille, French physician and physicist (Law of Hagen-Poiseuille)
1942: Frank Dawson Adams, Canadian geologist
1997: Cahit Arf, Turkish mathematician
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27
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December 27
December 27
27. December 2025
Born in
1571: Johannes Kepler, German natural philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, optician and theologian
1802: Gerardus Johannes Mulder, Dutch physician, pharmacologist, chemist. He is regarded as the discoverer of the protein
1822: Louis Pasteur, French chemist and pioneer of microbiology
1887: Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, British physicist
Deceased
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28
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December 28
December 28
28. December 2025
Born in
1675: Heinrich Klausing German Lutheran theologian, mathematician, astronomer and universal scholar
1814: John Bennet Lawes, British agricultural chemist
1818: Carl Remigius Fresenius, German chemist
1882: Arthur Stanley Eddington, British astrophysicist
1903: John von Neumann, mathematician and computer scientist
1929: Maarten Schmidt, Dutch astronomer
1939: Klaus Rudolf Schubert, German physicist
1944: Kary Banks Mullis, US biochemist
Deceased
1663: Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian theologian, physicist and mathematician
1751: Erich Philipp Ploennies, German mathematician and cartographer
1827: Robert Woodhouse, British Professor of Mathematics
1829: Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, Biologist
1893: Richard Spruce, English botanist and naturalist
1899: Karl Friedrich Rammelsberg, German chemist
1919: Johannes Rydberg, Swedish physicist
2013: Halton Arp, US-American astronomer
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29
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December 29
December 29
29. December 2025
1893: The French astronomer Stéphane Javelle discovers the galaxy pair IC 298 in the constellation Walvis.
1931: Emanuel Goldberg's statistical machine is registered in the USA as US patent 1,838,389. With the help of photocells and pattern recognition, the metadata on rolls of microfilm can be searched.
Born in
1796: Johann Christian Poggendorff, German physicist
1800: Charles Goodyear, US-American chemist and inventor
1826: Leopold von Pebal, Austrian chemist
1856: Thomas Jean Stieltjes, Dutch mathematician
1861: Kurt Hensel, German mathematician
1879: Ellen Gleditsch, Norwegian chemist
1886: Georg von Struve, German astronomer
1919: Erik Sparre Andersen, Danish mathematician
1928: Adolf Oberth, Romanian chemist and inventor
1957: Bruce Beutler, US-American immunologist and geneticist, Nobel Prize winner
Deceased
1731: Brook Taylor, British mathematician
1891: Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician
2004: Julius Axelrod, US-American physician and neurochemist
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30
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December 30
December 30
30. December 2025
Born in
1591: Joseph Furttenbach, German architect, mathematician, mechanic and chronicler
1871: Otto Ruff, German chemist
1919: Anton Amberger, German biologist
1934: John N. Bahcall, US-American astrophysicist
Deceased
1993: Giuseppe Occhialini, Italian physicist
2000: Alfred Burger, US-American chemist
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31
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December 31
December 31
31. December 2025
1862: The USS Monitor, the US Navy's first armoured ship, sinks in a storm in heavy seas off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
Born in
1937: Avram Hershko, Israeli biochemist
1939: Edmone Roffael, Arab-German chemist as well as wood and forestry scientist
1945: Leonard Adleman, US-American mathematician and cryptologist
Deceased
1679: Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Italian physicist and astronomer
1719: John Flamsteed, British astronomer
1799: Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton, French natural scientist
1956: Edwin Plimpton Adams, physicist
1982: Kurt Friedrichs, German-US-American mathematician
1987: Christopher Howard Andrewes, British virologist
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