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1543
Nicolaus Copernicus
Copernicus published his findings on the idea of a solar system that revolved around the sun. His ideas went against several religious beliefs, so he waited until he was near death to publish his book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies. -
1543
Andreas Vesalius
Vesalius dissected human corpses and provided detailed sketches of the human anatomy in his book, On the Fabric of the Human Body. -
Zacharias Janssen
Janssen created the first microscope in history. -
Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler
Brahe studied patterns of the planets and collected important data that his assistant, Kepler, followed up on after Brahe passed. After studying Brahe's data, Kepler came to the conclusion that planets orbit the sun in elliptical pathways rather than in circles. However, his greatest finding was mathematically proving Copernicus's heliocentric theory. -
Galileo Galilei
Galileo used a telescope to study the sky. After spending a great deal of time observing the solar system, Galileo published newsletter titled Starry Messenger. In the newsletters, he described features he saw on various planets. His observations eventually lead to issues with religious groups that the ideas he described challenged. -
William Harvey
Following up on Vesalius's work, Harvey published On the
Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals to demonstrate how several bodily functions work. -
Evangelista Torricelli
Torricelli was a student of Galileo's who invented the first mercury barometer, a scientific tool used to measure atmospheric pressure and predict wind. -
Robert Boyle
Boyle published a book titled, The Sceptical
Chymist which challenged ideas of Aristotle. He produced the idea of Boyle's law which explained the affects volume, pressure of gas, and temperature on each other. -
Isaac Newton
Newton published his book, Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy, which impacted the scientific world for years to come. In it, he described the solar system to be very similar to a clock. -
Gabriel Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit created the first thermometer with mercury in glass. The thermometer measured water as freezing at 32 degrees. -
Anders Celsius
Celsius created a different scale for mercury thermometers that measured water to be freezing at zero degrees.
