| 1651 |
The English anatomist William Harvey describes organ
formation in the developing embryo. The lymphatic system
is recognised and glands described. The structure of the
lungs and the circulation of the blood is understood.
Anton van Leeuwenhoek develops a simple but effective
microscope and goes on to describe cells, protists and sperm
(which he describes as "human larvae").
The life of plants - their anatomy, their reproduction
and their classification - becomes much more clearly understood
through the work of John Ray and others.
|
| 1656 |
The Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens discovers
the rings of Saturn.
Edmund Halley discovers the periodicity of the comets
and the motion of the stars, whilst Giovanni Domenico
Cassini studies the solar system ands discovers a great
deal about planets and their moons.
|
| 1667 |
Margaret Cavendish becomes
a member of the Royal Society. Women and science at this time
are, for the most part, kept well apart from each other. "Mad
Madge", as the Duchess of Newcastle is known, fights
hard not only to be allowed to study science but also to be
allowed to become a member of the Royal Society. She writes
large amounts about the new science, and eventually, against
much opposition, is admitted as a member. It is a measure
of her achievement - and of the prejudices of society - that
the next woman to be admitted to the Royal Society will be
the crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale in 1945! |
| |
Robert Boyle is one of few chemists who makes a
mark during this time. He shows that respiration and combustion
are similar processes. He also introduces modern ideas of
elements, alkalis and acids, and puts forward the results
of his observations on the behaviour of gases under different
conditions. This results in Boyle's laws. He discovers a
flammable gas produced when some metals react with acids
- we now know this inflammable air as hydrogen.
Hennig Brand accidentally discovers the element
phosphorus during an experiment with urine, but he keeps
it secret and Robert Boyle later discovers and describes
the element.
|
| |
Robert Hooke is busy dabbling
in all sorts of areas of science - some more successfully
than others. In 1674 he works on interplanetary motion, but
by 1676 he has found the relationship between the stretch
of a spring and the tension in it which we still know as Hooke's
law. He is the first to describe cells, seen in a section
of cork. Hooke goes on to lose a contest with Isaac Newton
to describe accurately the elliptical paths of the planets,
although Hooke claims that Newton stole his initial idea of
using the inverse-square law. A bitter rivalry between these
two great men continues until Hooke's death in 1703.  |
| 1687 |
Isaac Newton publishes his great work, Philosophiae
naturalis principia mathematica. This contains his three
laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. This
is a major step forward in the way physicists understand
the world.
|
| 1691 |
John Ray suggests that
fossils are the remains of animals from the distant past.
|
| 1693 |
John Ray publishes the
first important classification of animals and correctly puts
whales in with the other mammals. |
| 1694 |
The German scientist Rudolph Camerarius shows the
difference between the male and the female reproductive
organs in plants.
|
| 1697 |
Anton van Leeuwenhoek
explains his discovery of what he calls "animalculae"
using his microscope. |
| 1700 |
Bemadino Rammazzini begins
to look systematically at occupational diseases and concludes
that more nuns than married women develop breast cancer, possibly
due to a link to pregnancy and lactation. |
