1676 in science

The year 1676 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

• Summer – The Royal Greenwich Observatory, designed by Christopher Wren, is completed near London.^[1]
• December 7 – Danish astronomer Ole Rømer measures the speed of light by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons, obtaining a speed of 140,000 miles per second (approximately 25% too slow).
• Edmond Halley arrives on the island of Saint Helena, having left the University of Oxford, and sets up an astronomical observatory to catalogue stars from the Southern Hemisphere.

Biology

• Antony Van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria, observed with the microscope.^[2]
• Francis Willughby's Ornithologiae is published by John Ray, the foundation of scientific ornithology.^[3][4][5][6]

Medicine

• William Briggs publishes an anatomy of the eye (the first in England), Ophthalmographia, at Cambridge.^[7]
• Thomas Sydenham publishes the textbook Observationes mediciae, the enlarged 3rd edition of his Methodus curandi febres.

Paleontology

• The first fossilised bone of what is now known to be a dinosaur is discovered in England by Robert Plot, the femur of a Megalosaurus from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.^[8]

Physics

• Robert Hooke first reveals Hooke's law as a Latin anagram.^[9]

Technology

• July 7 – The first clocks using a form of deadbeat escapement, constructed by Thomas Tompion to a design by Richard Towneley, are installed at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

Births

• May 28 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (died 1754)
• Caleb Threlkeld, Irish botanist (died 1728)
• Maria Clara Eimmart, German astronomer, engraver and designer (died 1707)

Deaths

• May 25 – Johann Rahn, Swiss mathematician (born 1622)
• September 4 – John Ogilby, English cartographer (born 1600)