1586 in science
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The year 1586 in science and technology included a number of events, some of which are listed here.
Astronomy
Botany
- Jacques Daléchamps publishes Historia generalis plantarum in Lyon, describing 2,731 plants, a record number for this time.
Cryptography
- Blaise de Vigenère publishes Traicté des chiffres ou secretes manières d'escrire in Paris, describing an autokey cipher of his invention.
Exploration
- July 21 â Thomas Cavendish sets out from Plymouth in the Desire on the first deliberately planned circumnavigation.[2]
Mathematics
- Francesco Barozzi publishes Admirandum illud geometricum problema tredecim modis demonstratum quod docet duas lineas in eodem plano designare, a treatise on the construction of parallel lines.
Medicine
- Timothy Bright publishes A Treatise of Melancholie; containing the causes thereof, & reasons of the strange effects it worketh in our minds and bodies: with the phisicke cure, and spirituall consolation... in London.
Physics
- Galileo publishes La Billancetta, describing an accurate balance to weigh objects in air or water.[3]
- Simon Stevin publishes De Beghinselen der Weeghconst in Leiden, discussing static forces; and De Beghinselen des Waterwichts, discussing the weight of water.
Zoology
- Luis Méndez de Torres's Tratado Breve De La Cultivacion y Cura de las Colmenas ("Short Tractate on the Cultivation and Care of Beehives") first observes that hives have a queen bee and not a king as previously thought.[4]
Births
- February 26 â Niccolò Cabeo, Italian polymath (died 1650)
- December 6 â Niccolò Zucchi, Italian astronomer (died 1670)[5]
- John Mason, English explorer (died 1635)
- Giovanni de Galliano Pieroni, Italian military engineer and astronomer (died 1654)
- approx. date â Guy de La Brosse, French physician and botanist (died 1641)
Deaths
- January 9 â Paul Wittich, German astronomer and mathematician (born c. 1546)
- January 22 - Louis Duret, French physician (born 1527)
- May 29 â Adam Lonicer, German botanist (born 1528)
- June 1 â MartÃn de Azpilcueta, Spanish theologian and economist (born 1491)
- October 19 â Ignazio Danti, Italian mathematician and astronomer (born 1536)