Timeline (nonfiction)

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  1452 Dec. 10: Mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, priest, maker of astronomical instruments, and professor Johannes Stöffler born.

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  1462 Feb. 1: Polymath Johannes Trithemius born. He will be remembered as a lexicographer, chronicler, cryptographer, and occultist.

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  1600 Feb. 17: Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake.

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  1600 Feb. 19: The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.

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  1732 Oct 29: Physicist and academic Laura Bassi is granted professorship in philosophy by the University of Bologna, thus also making her a member of the Academy of the Sciences.

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  1788 Feb 20: Physicist and academic Laura Bassi dies. She was one of the key figures in introducing Newton's ideas of physics and natural philosophy to Italy.

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  1804: Mathematician and academic Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi born. He will make fundamental contributions to elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations, and number theory.

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  1815 Dec. 10: Mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace born.

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  1851 Feb. 18: Mathematician and academic Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi dies. He made fundamental contributions to elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations, and number theory.

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  1882 Mar. 23: Mathematician Emmy Noether born. She will make landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.

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  1891 Feb. 17: Mathematician Abraham Fraenkel born. He will contribute to axiomatic set theory, and publish a biography of George Cantor.

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  1903 Feb. 1: Physicist and mathematician Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet dies. He made seminal contributions to fluid dynamics (including the Navier–Stokes equations) and to physical optics.

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  1904 Apr. 22: American physicist and academic J. Robert Oppenheimer born. His achievements in physics will include the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wavefunctions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling.

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  1913: A group of meteors is visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.

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  1932 Jan. 5: Novelist, literary critic, and philosopher Umberto Eco born. He will cite James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges as the two modern authors who will have influenced his work the most.

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  1935 April 14: Mathematician Emmy Noether dies. She made landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.

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  1965 Oct. 15: Mathematician Abraham Fraenkel dies. He contributed to axiomatic set theory, and published a biography of George Cantor.

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  1967 Feb. 18: American physicist and academic J. Robert Oppenheimer dies. His achievements in physics included the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wavefunctions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling.

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  1976 Feb. 1: Physicist and academic Werner Heisenberg dies. He introduced the uncertainty principle -- in quantum mechanics, any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle can be known.

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  1986 Feb 20: The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.

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  2001 March 23: The Mir spacecraft is de-orbited. It had been in orbit for 15 years, it was occupied for ten of those years.

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  2011 Mar. 23: Jean Bartik dies. She was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer.

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  2012 Feb. 17: Mathematician and theorist Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn dies. He made contributions in the fields of analysis, number theory, combinatorics, and logic.

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  2016 Feb. 9: Novelist, literary critic, and philosopher Umberto Eco dies. He cited James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges as the two modern authors who have influenced his work the most.