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The History of Science Portal

The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal.

Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3000 to 1200 BCE. These civilizations' contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine influenced later Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, wherein formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Latin-speaking Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but continued to thrive in the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire. Aided by translations of Greek texts, the Hellenistic worldview was preserved and absorbed into the Arabic-speaking Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived the learning of natural philosophy in the West.

Natural philosophy was transformed during the Scientific Revolution in 16th- to 17th-century Europe, as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The New Science that emerged was more mechanistic in its worldview, more integrated with mathematics, and more reliable and open as its knowledge was based on a newly defined scientific method. More "revolutions" in subsequent centuries soon followed. The chemical revolution of the 18th century, for instance, introduced new quantitative methods and measurements for chemistry. In the 19th century, new perspectives regarding the conservation of energy, age of Earth, and evolution came into focus. And in the 20th century, new discoveries in genetics and physics laid the foundations for new subdisciplines such as molecular biology and particle physics. Moreover, industrial and military concerns as well as the increasing complexity of new research endeavors ushered in the era of "big science," particularly after the Second World War. (Full article...)

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Reproduction of frontispiece by Robert Taylor Pritchett from the first Murray illustrated edition, 1890: HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan at Monte Sarmiento in Chile.

The Voyage of the Beagle is the title most commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, bringing him considerable fame and respect. This was the third volume of The Narrative of the Voyages of H.M. Ships Adventure and Beagle, the other volumes of which were written or edited by the commanders of the ships. Journal and Remarks covers Darwin's part in the second survey expedition of the ship HMS Beagle. Due to the popularity of Darwin's account, the publisher reissued it later in 1839 as Darwin's Journal of Researches, and the revised second edition published in 1845 used this title. A republication of the book in 1905 introduced the title The Voyage of the "Beagle", by which it is now best known.

Beagle sailed from Plymouth Sound on 27 December 1831 under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy. While the expedition was originally planned to last two years, it lasted almost five—Beagle did not return until 2 October 1836. Darwin spent most of this time exploring on land (three years and three months on land; 18 months at sea). The book is a vivid travel memoir as well as a detailed scientific field journal covering biology, geology, and anthropology that demonstrates Darwin's keen powers of observation, written at a time when Western Europeans were exploring and charting the whole world. Although Darwin revisited some areas during the expedition, for clarity the chapters of the book are ordered by reference to places and locations rather than by date. (Full article...)

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Great chain of being Luminiferous aether French Academy of Sciences Einstein–Szilárd letter Inherit the Wind (play) Deutsche Physik Tychonic system Paradigm shift Conflict thesis Archaeoastronomy Tests of general relativity Lysenkoism Space Race German nuclear weapons program History of biology History of military technology Women in science Cabinets of curiosities Electrochemistry History of physics Creation–evolution controversy History of paleontology History of evolutionary thought Big Science Romanticism in science Manhattan Project Celestial spheres Strategic Defense Initiative Timeline of chemistry Astronomical symbols History of molecular theory History of chemistry Chemical revolution Ferrous metallurgy Discovery Expedition Social history of viruses On the Origin of Species History of evolutionary thought History of timekeeping devices Science in the medieval Islamic world Fizeau–Foucault apparatus Discovery of nuclear fission History of agriculture History of paleontology Aristotle's biology Science and technology of the Han dynasty History of artificial intelligence History of the metric system Condemnations of 1210–1277 Dynamics of the celestial spheres History of Mars observation Physical cosmology History of genetics History of science in early cultures History of science and technology in Africa History of science and technology in China History of science and technology in the Indian subcontinent Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men History of medicine History of virology History of astronomy Classical element

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A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (sometimes called simply The Orrery) is a painting (oil on canvas, ca. 1766) by Joseph Wright of Derby depicting a public lecture about a model Solar System, with a lamp—in place of the Sun—illuminating the faces of the audience. Wright captures the spirit of the Enlightenment, with knowledge as a force of moral uplift for the audience of commoners under the tutelage of the natural philosopher. Consistent with the astronomical theme, the partially illuminated faces may represent the phases of the Moon, ranging from full (the children) to gibbous (the man standing on the left) to new (the figure seen from behind).

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Did you know

...that the travel narrative The Malay Archipelago, by biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, was used by the novelist Joseph Conrad as a source for his novel Lord Jim?

...that the seventeenth century philosophers René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz, along with their Empiricist contemporary Thomas Hobbes all formulated definitions of conatus, an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself?

...that according to the controversial Hockney-Falco thesis, the rise of realism in Renaissance art, such as Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (pictured), was largely due to the use of curved mirrors and other optical aids?

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Portrait of Newton at 46 by Godfrey Kneller, 1689

Sir Isaac Newton PRS (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus.

In the Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems. (Full article...)

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Thomas Edison Luther Burbank Benjamin Franklin Charles Babbage John Harrison Ptolemy Vannevar Bush Joseph Lister Charles Darwin Hippocrates Barbara McClintock Edward Drinker Cope Alfred Russel Wallace Johannes Kepler Edward Teller Enrico Fermi James Chadwick Leonhard Euler Niels Bohr Rachel Carson Shen Kuo G. Ledyard Stebbins Zhang Heng Mark Oliphant Francis Willughby Louis Slotin Joseph Priestley James B. Conant Mary Anning Georg Forster Albert Einstein Galileo Galilei James Clerk Maxwell Nikola Tesla Arthur Compton Glenn T. Seaborg Hans Bethe Srinivasa Ramanujan Marie Curie Emilio Segrè Friedrich Accum George Kistiakowsky Bruno Rossi Alan Turing Maria Goeppert Mayer John von Neumann Asa Gray Su Song Klaus Fuchs Lorna Arnold C. Doris Hellman Muhammad al-Qunawi Richard Hamming Robert Hooke Theophrastus Tycho Brahe Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Francis Crick Alexander von Humboldt Antoine Lavoisier René Descartes

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Selected anniversaries

December 2:

1885 – Birth of George Richards Minot, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize (d. 1950)
1931 – Birth of Nigel Calder, British science writer
1942 - Manhattan Project: A team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction

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General images

The following are images from various history of science-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Diagram of the Antikythera mechanism, an analog astronomical calculator (from Science in classical antiquity)
Image 2Image of veins from William Harvey's Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. Harvey demonstrated that blood circulated around the body, rather than being created in the liver. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 3The Royal Society had its origins in Gresham College in the City of London, and was the first scientific society in the world. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 4Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait (from History of science in early cultures)
Image 5Plato and Aristotle. The School of Athens (1509). (from History of science in early cultures)
Image 6Islamic expansion:
  under Muhammad, 622–632
  under Rashidun caliphs, 632–661
  under Umayyad caliphs, 661–750
(from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 7The 1698 Savery Engine was the first successful steam engine (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 8 Modern copy of al-Idrisi's 1154 Tabula Rogeriana, upside-down, north at top (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 9Portrait of Johannes Kepler (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 10Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought iron Pillar of Delhi. (from History of science in early cultures)
Image 11A 19th-century portrait of Pliny the Elder (from Science in classical antiquity)
Image 12Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661 (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 13Air pump built by Robert Boyle. Many new instruments were devised in this period, which greatly aided in the expansion of scientific knowledge. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 14Page from the Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals) by Al-Jahiz. Ninth century (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 15Surviving fragment of the first World Map of Piri Reis (1513) (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 16The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 17A mosaic depicting Plato's Academy, from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii (1st century AD). (from Science in classical antiquity)
Image 18Messier Object 1, the Crab Nebula. In the nebula's very centre lies a pulsar: a neutron star rotating 30 times per second. (from History of science in early cultures)
Image 19The physician Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine" (from Science in classical antiquity)
Image 20Omar Khayyam's "Cubic equation and intersection of conic sections" (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 21Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustrée, Amsterdam, 1670. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 22Vesalius's intricately detailed drawings of human dissections in Fabrica helped to overturn the medical theories of Galen. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 23Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 24Otto von Guericke's experiments on electrostatics, published 1672 (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 25A page from al-Khwarizmi's Algebra (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 26George Trebizond's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Almagest (c. 1451) (from Science in classical antiquity)
Image 27Francis Bacon was a pivotal figure in establishing the scientific method of investigation. Portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger (1617). (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 28Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering work of experimental science (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 29Self trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir's treatise on mechanical devices, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 30The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–1261 (and later in Egypt) at its height, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 31The Tusi couple, a mathematical device invented by the Persian polymath Nasir al-Din Tusi to model the not perfectly circular motions of the planets (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 32Quince, cypress, and sumac trees, in Zakariya al-Qazwini's 13th century Wonders of Creation (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 33The eye according to Hunayn ibn Ishaq, c. 1200 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 34Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), (965–1039 Iraq). A polymath, considered to be the father of modern scientific methodology due to his emphasis on experimental data and on the reproducibility of its results. (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
$Image 35Newton's Opticks or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light (from Scientific Revolution)$

Image 35Newton's Opticks or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 36Isaac Newton's Principia, developed the first set of unified scientific laws. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 37Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474. (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 38Schematic of the antikythera mechanism (from History of science in early cultures)
Image 39Mesopotamian clay tablet-letter from 2400 BC, Louvre. (from King of Lagash, found at Girsu) (from History of science in early cultures)
Image 40Ibn Sina teaching the use of drugs. 15th-century Great Canon of Avicenna (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 41Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Leoni (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 42An ivory set of Napier's Bones, an early calculating device invented by John Napier (from Scientific Revolution)
Image 43Apollonius wrote a comprehensive study of conic sections in the Conics. (from Science in classical antiquity)
Image 44The four classical elements (fire, air, water, earth) of Empedocles illustrated with a burning log. The log releases all four elements as it is destroyed. (from Science in classical antiquity)
Image 45octahedral shape of diamond. (from History of science in early cultures)
Image 46A coloured illustration from Mansur's Anatomy, c. 1450 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Image 47al-Biruni's explanation of the phases of the moon (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)

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