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1460: The University of Basel, founded by Pope Pius II, is inaugurated. This makes it the oldest university in Switzerland.
1905: An earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale in Kangra, India, kills around 19,000 people.

Born in
1688: Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, French astronomer
1809: Benjamin Peirce, American mathematician and astronomer
1846: Raoul Pictet, Swiss physicist
1871: Arthur Wehnelt, German physicist
1892: Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth, German astronomer

Deceased
1617: John Napier, a Scottish mathematician, introduced the logarithm.
1807: Jérôme Lalande, French mathematician and astronomer
1870: Heinrich Gustav Magnus, German chemist and physicist, in Berlin.
1919: Sir Williams Crookes, British physicist, chemist and science journalist, in London. His achievements included the discovery of the element thallium.
1929: Karl Benz, German automotive engineer
1932: Wilhelm Ostwald, German-Baltic chemist and Nobel Prize winner, in Leipzig
1976: Harry Nyquist, US-American physicist
1984: Scott E. Forbush, US-American geophysicist
1990: Bernhard Rensch, German evolutionary biologist

1815: The eruption of the Tambora volcano on Sumbawa in Indonesia, lasting about 14 days, begins with a first eruption. Another eruption, especially on 10 April, resulted in a total of about 100,000 deaths due to the eruption and subsequent tidal waves. Due to the volcanic winter there are also famines in Europe.
1958: The underwater mountain Ripple Rock between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland, which has posed a constant danger to shipping, is blown up with 1,375 tons of explosives. It is one of the largest conventional explosions in history.

Born in
1622: Vincenzo Viviani, mathematician and physicist
1804: Matthias Jacob Schleiden, German botanist and co-founder of cell theory
1877: Georg Faber, German mathematician
1935: Donald Lynden-Bell, British astronomer and astrophysicist

Deceased

1909: The US explorer Robert Peary is the first man to reach the North Pole.
2000: The US company Celera announces that it has decoded 99 percent of the human genome code.

Born in
1890: André Danjon, French astronomer
1911: Feodor Lynen, German biochemist
1913: Otto Schmitt, US biophysicist, co-founder of biomimetics and inventor
1919: Richard M. Noyes, US-American chemist
1928: James Dewey Watson, American biochemist and discoverer of DNA structure (Nobel Prize for Medicine), in Chicago.
1949: Horst Ludwig Störmer, German physicist

Deceased
1961: Jules Bordet, Belgian bacteriologist
1992: Isaac Asimov, American scientist and author

1348: The German King Charles IV founds the Alma Mater Carolina in Prague as the first German university and the first university north of the Alps.
1989: The Soviet nuclear submarine K-278 Komsomolez sinks after a fire in the stern of the Norwegian Bear Island. 42 sailors die.

Born in
1727: Michel Adanson, French botanist
1884: John Hutchinson, British botanist
1914: Walter Hugo Stockmeyer, American chemist and co-founder of the journal Macromolecules, born in Rutherford.
1944: Makoto Kobayashi, Japanese physicist and Nobel Prize winner.

Deceased
1823: Jacques Charles, French physicist, chemist, inventor and aviation pioneer
1870: Claude Félix Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor, French chemist, inventor and photographer
1941: Lazăr Edeleanu, Romanian chemist
1980: Charles Frederick Goodeve, Canadian chemist
2008: Joachim Wattendorff, German biologist

Born in
1779: Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger, German chemist and physicist
1818: August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist, in Giessen.
1868: Werner von Bolton, German chemist and materials scientist, inventor of the metallic filaments.
1911: Melvn Calvin, American biochemist, in Saint Pul. He succeeded in elucidating the dark reaction of photosynthesis. For this work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
1936: Reinhold Albert Aman, German chemical engineer and university lecturer

Deceased
1959: Jonathan Zenneck, German physicist, radio pioneer and inventor
1984: Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist
1992: Daniel Bovet, Italian pharmacologist, Nobel Prize winner
2013: Margaret Thatcher, British chemist, lawyer and politician, first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Born in
1770: Thomas Johann Seebeck, German physicist
1806: Isambard Kingdom Brunel, English engineer
1819: Annibale de Gasparis, Italian astronomer
1887: Heinrich Hock, German chemist

Deceased
1850: William Prout, British physician and chemist
1889: Michel Eugène Chevreul, French chemist and founder of modern pigment theory, in Paris
1982: Robert Havemann, German chemist, in Grünheide.

Born in
1766: John Leslie, Scottish mathematician and physicist
1882: Ludwig Hermann, German chemist, in Memmingen, Germany
1900: Arnold Orville Beckman, US-American chemist

Deceased
1813: Joseph-Louis Lagrange, French mathematician
1863: Giovanni Battista Amici, Italian astronomer and optician
1992: Peter Dennis Mitchell, British chemist and Nobel laureate (1978), in Bodmin.

1928: The first rocket-powered car starts on the Opel factory race track in Rüsselsheim.

Born in
1755: James Parkinson, English discoverer of Parkinson´schen disease
1908: Georg Brauer, German chemist
1953: Andrew Wiles, British mathematician

Deceased
1591: Levinus Battus, German physician
1875: Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, German astronomer
1895: Lothar Meyer, German physician and chemist

1817: The University of Halle and the University of Wittenberg merge to form the Vereinigte Friedrichs-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Halle an der Saale.
1961: The Soviet cosmonaut Juri Gagarin flies from Baikonur aboard Vostok 1 as the first human into space.

Born in
1794: Germinal Pierre Dandelin, Belgian mathematician
1872: Georges Urbain, French chemist
1952: Christof Wetterich, German theoretical physicist

Deceased
1817: Charles Messier, French astronomer
1902: Alfred Cornu, French physicist
1930: Joseph König, German chemist
1971: Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, Soviet physicist of Russian-German origin, Nobel Prize winner
2009: John Maddox, British chemist and science journalist

1514: Georg Tannstetter publishes Viri Mathematici quos inclytum Viennense gymnasium ordine celebres habuit. In this early approach to the history of science, the astronomers and mathematicians working in Vienna up to that time are described in detail.

Born in
1872: Jan Szczepanik, Polish chemist and inventor
1905: Bruno Rossi, Italian astrophysicist

Deceased
1853: Leopold Gmelin, German chemist
2008: John Archibald Wheeler, American physicist

1958: The Soviet satellite Sputnik II, which brought the bitch Laika into Earth orbit, burns up after 162 days in space in the Earth's atmosphere.

Born in
1629: Christiaan Huygens, Dutch astronomer, mathematician and physicist
1775: Karl Ferdinand Becker, German doctor, natural scientist, pedagogue and linguist
1875: Luigi Carnera, Italian astronomer
1914: Pehr Edman, Swedish biochemist
1927: Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealand chemist, Nobel Prize winner
1938: Bruce Alberts, US-American biochemist

Deceased
1792: Maximilian Hell, Austrian Jesuit and Astronomer
1807: Jeremias Benjamin Richter, chemist
1935: Emmy Noether, German mathematician
1936: Georg Wiegner, German agricultural chemist and soil scientist
2011: William Lipscomb, US-American chemist
2014: Dieter Klaua, German mathematician

1912: The luxury liner Titanic sinks into the Atlantic at 2:20 a.m. after colliding with an iceberg. Between 1490 and 1517 people die.

Born in
1707: Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician
1710: William Cullen, Scottish physician and chemist
1793: Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, German astronomer
1809: Hermann Graßmann, German mathematician
1834: Eugen Lucius, German chemist, industrialist and patron of the arts
1843: Franz Schwackhöfer, Austrian chemist, professor and university director
1871: Jonathan Zenneck, German physicist and radio pioneer
1874: Johannes Stark, German physicist, Nobel Prize winner
1896: Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Semjonow, Russian physicochemist and Nobel Prize winner
1943: Robert J. Lefkowitz, US-American chemist and Nobel Prize winner
1951: Harald Fuchs, German physicist

Deceased
1853: Auguste Laurent, French chemist
1854: Arthur Aikin, English chemist, mineralogist and author

1943: The Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the psychoactive effect of LSD in Sandoz, which he produced as early as 1938 in his search for a circulatory stimulant.

Born in
1495: Petrus Apianus, German astronomer and geographer
1682: John Hadley, English astronomer and mathematician
1728: Joseph Black, British physicist and chemist from Scotland, discoverer of carbon dioxide, magnesium, and latent heat.
1760: Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt, German pharmacist, chemist, technical writer and technologist
1788: Johann Friedrich Ruthe, German botanist
1822: Karl Theodor Robert Luther, German astronomer
1823: Gotthold Eisenstein, German mathematician
1847: Friedrich August Bender, German chemist and entrepreneur
1959: Grzegorz Pojmański, Polish astronomer

Deceased
1756: Jacques Cassini, French astronomer and geographer
1901: Henry Augustus Rowland, Physicist
1958: Rosalind Elsie Franklin, British biochemist
1968: Albert Betz, German physicist and pioneer of wind power technology
1989: Kaoru Ishikawa, Japanese chemist (Ishikawa diagram).

Born in
1598: Giovanni Riccioli, Italian theologian, astronomer and philosopher
1814: August Grisebach, German botanist and university professor
1853: Arthur Moritz Schoenflies, German mathematician
1946: Georges Köhler, German biologist
1952: Hans Dobbertin, German mathematician and cryptologist

Deceased
1761: Thomas Bayes, English mathematician and Presbyterian pastor
1918: Friedrich Karl Johannes Thiele, German chemist
1945: Robert Luther, chemist
2003: Jozef Schell, Belgian biochemist

Born in
1838: Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, French chemist, in Cognac
1875: Ugo Amaldi, Italian mathematician
1881: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, US-American physicist
1905: George Herbert Hitchings, US biochemist, Nobel Prize winner
1912: Max Waldmeier, Swiss astronomer and sun researcher

Deceased
1674: John Graunt, pioneer of modern statistics
1873: Justus von Liebig, German chemist, in Munich
1883: Édouard Albert Roche, French mathematician
1926: Jan Szczepanik, Polish chemist and inventor
1945: John Ambrose Fleming, British electrical engineer and physicist
1955: Albert Einstein, founder of the theory of relativity, at Princeton
1999: István Vincze, Hungarian mathematician

1971: The Soviet Union launches Saljut 1, the first space station. After a period of use of 123 days, it burns up on 11 October.

Born in
1635: Samuel Reyher, German mathematician and astronomer
1801: Gustav Theodor Fechner, German physicist and philosopher
1867: James Cullen, Irish mathematician
1883: Richard von Mises, Austrian mathematician
1912: Glenn T. Seaborg, US-American chemist and nuclear physicist
1929: Chung Kyu-Myung, Korean physicist
1949: Joachim Sauer, German physical chemist

Deceased
1882:Charles Darwin, British natural scientist and founder of the theory of evolution, in Downe
1906:Pierre Curie, French physicist, died in an accident in Paris.
1959: Gustav Kramer, German biologist, ornithologist and zoologist, discovered the sun compass in birds.
2004: John Maynard Smith, British geneticist and evolutionary biologist
2013: Kenneth Appel, US-American mathematician

1303: The University of La Sapienza in Rome is built by Pope Boniface VIII for the training of priests.
1902: Marie and Pierre Curie succeed in isolating the chemical element radium.

Born
1859: Vincenzo Cerulli, Italian astronomer
1860: Ludwig Gattermann, German chemist
1913: Willi Hennig, German biologist
1918: Kai Manne Siegbahn, Swedish physicist

Born in
1774: Jean-Baptiste Biot, French physicist and mathematician
1889: Paul Karrer, Swiss chemist, born in Moscow. In 1937 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in recognition of his work on carotenoids and flavins as well as vitamins A and B2.
1913: Richard Beeching, British physicist and engineer, Chairman of the British Railways Regulatory Authority.

Deceased
1552: Petrus Apianus, German astronomer and geographer
1850: Johann Heinrich Cassebeer, botanist, geologist, politician and natural scientist
1965: Edward Victor Appleton, British physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in
1592: Wilhelm Schickard, German mathematician
1811: Otto Hesse, German mathematician
1839: August Wilhelm Eichler, German botanist
1861: Emil Müller, Austrian mathematician
1876: Robert Bárány, Austrian neurobiologist and physician, Nobel prize winner
1887: Harald Bohr, Danish mathematician
1891: Harold Jeffreys, British mathematician, geophysicist and astronomer
1904: Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist, father of the atomic bomb
1909: Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian neurologist and neurobiologist, Nobel Prize winner
1919: Donald James Cram, American chemist and Nobel laureate (1987), in Chester
1929: Michael Francis Atiyah, Mathematician

Deceased
1980: Fritz Straßmann, German chemist, co-discoverer of nuclear fission
2005: Philip Morrison, US-American physicist

1994: Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, USA, discover the top quark with the help of the particle accelerator Tevatron.

Born
1679: Johann Georg Liebknecht, German professor of theology and mathematics
1765: Jacob Fidelis Ackermann, German physician
1768: Friedrich Groos, German physician and philosopher
1858: Max Planck, German theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner, is considered the founder of quantum physics.
1896: George Messier, French chemical engineer
1940: Konrad Kleinknecht, German physicist

Deceased

1981 The IBM Personal Computer is introduced

Born in
1620: John Graunt, pioneer of modern statistics
1817: Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac, Swiss chemist
1899: Oscar Zariski, Russian mathematician

Deceased
1775: John Rutty, English physician, chemist and natural scientist
1960: Max von Laue, German physicist and Nobel Prize winner, in Berlin

1953: In the journal Nature the English biochemists Francis Crick and James Watson publish the article Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid about their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA on 28 February.

Born
1849: Haruthiun Abeljanz, Swiss chemist
1849: Felix Klein, German mathematician
1862: Adolf Miethe, German photochemist and physicist
1900: Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Deceased
1744:Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer and inventor of the Celsius scale
1840: Siméon Denis Poisson, French physicist and mathematician

1506: The first Brandenburg State University, the Viadrina University in Frankfurt an der Oder with four faculties, is ceremoniously opened.
1942: The world's most serious mining accident to date with 1,549 deaths is caused by an explosion at the Benxihu coal mine in Manchuria, China.
1986: The Chernobyl catastrophe near the Ukrainian city of Prypjat is the most severe design-basis accident (also known as Super-GAU) in the civil use of nuclear energy.

Born
1821: Robert Adamson, Scottish chemist and photographer
1838: Carl Wilhelm Heine, German physician
1879: Owen Willans Richardson, British physicist, Nobel Prize winner
1932: Michael Smith, British chemist, Nobel Prize winner
1933: Arno Penzias, US-American physicist

Deceased
1920: S. Ramanujan, Indian mathematician
1940: Karl Bosch, German metallurgist and chemist
1960: Hiker Johannes de Haas, Dutch physicist and mathematician
1996: Wolfgang Franz, German mathematician

Born in
1755: Marc-Antoine Parseval, French mathematician
1837: Paul Gordan, German mathematician
1875: Maurice de Broglie, 6th Duke of Broglie, physicist, member of the Académie française
1876: Heinrich Mache, Austrian physicist
1884: Arthur Wieferich, German mathematician
1896: Wallace H. Carothers, US-American chemist

Deceased
1882: Ferdinand Reich, German chemist and physicist

Born in
1726: Jean François Clément Morand, French chemist, mineralogist and medical doctor
1753: Franz Karl Achard, German chemist, inventor of sugar production from sugar beets
1765: Sylvestre Lacroix, French mathematician
1773: Robert Woodhouse, British Professor of Mathematics
1774: Francis Baily, British astronomer
1831: Peter Guthrie Tait, Scottish physicist
1902: Alfred Rieche, German chemist
1928: Eugene Shoemaker, US-American astronomer

Deceased
1832: Friedrich Gottlob Hayne, German botanist, pharmacist and university lecturer
1879: Thilo Irmisch, German botanist
1902: Lazarus Fuchs, German mathematician
1903: Josiah Willard Gibbs, US-American physicist
2007: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, German physicist, philosopher and peace researcher

Born in
1854: Henri Poincaré, French mathematician and theoretical physicist
1893: Harold Clayton Urey, US-American chemist
1894: Marietta Blau, Austrian physicist
1914: Charles Fehrenbach, French astronomer
1915: Gerhard Hochschild, US-American mathematician
1921: Cornelis de Jager, Dutch astronomer
1927: Walter Thirring, Austrian physicist

Deceased
1840: Pierre Jean Robiquet, French chemist
1966: William Henry Eccles, British physicist
2008: Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist

1897: The British physicist Joseph John Thomson succeeds in experimentally proving the existence of the electron as predicted by George Johnstone Stoney.

Born in
1773: Johann Karl Burckhardt, German astronomer
1777: Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician
1924: Erhard Heinz, German mathematician
1930: Julius Adler, US biochemist