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The year 1666 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Events

• December 22 – French Academy of Sciences first meets.

Astronomy

• Publication of Stanisław Lubieniecki's Theatrum Cometicum begins in Amsterdam, the first encyclopedia and atlas of comets.

Botany

• Establishment of Herrenhäuser Gärten, Hanover.

Mathematics

• Isaac Newton develops differential calculus.
• Samuel Morland produces several designs of pocket calculating machine and also publishes A New Method of Cryptography.

Physics

• Isaac Newton uses a prism to split sunlight into the component colours of the optical spectrum, assisting understanding of the nature of light.
• Robert Hooke and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli both expound gravitation as an attractive force (Hooke's lecture "On gravity" at the Royal Society of London on March 21; Borelli's Theoricae Mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deductae, published in Florence later in the year).

Publications

• Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne, publishes Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, including an attack on Robert Hooke's Micrographia.

Births

• December – Stephen Gray, English scientist (died 1736)

Deaths

• Giovanni Battista Baliani, Genoese physicist (born 1582)
• Song Yingxing, Chinese encyclopedist (born 1587)

References

1. Dickinson, H. W. (1970). Sir Samuel Morland: diplomat and inventor 1625–1695. Cambridge: Heffer for the Newcomen Society. ISBN 0-85270-061-X.
2. Wilson, Curtis (1989). "The Newtonian achievement in astronomy". Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the rise of astrophysics: 2A: Tycho Brahe to Newton. Cambridge University Press. p. 239.
3. Fitzmaurice, James (2004). "Cavendish, Margaret, duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne (1623?–1673)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4940. Retrieved 2011-11-24. (subscription or UK public library membership required)

• 1666 in science
• 17th century in science
• 1660s in science