1512 in science

The year 1512 in science and technology included a number of events, some of which are listed here.

List of years in science (table)
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Astronomy

• Possible date – Nicolaus Copernicus begins to write Commentariolus, an abstract of what will eventually become De revolutionibus orbium coelestium; he sends it to other scientists interested in the matter by 1514.[1][2][3]

Exploration

• António de Abreu discovers Timor island and reaches the Banda Islands and Seram.
• Francisco Serrão reaches the Moluccas.
• Juan Ponce de León discovers the Turks and Caicos Islands.
• Pedro Mascarenhas discovers Diego Garcia and reaches Mauritius in the Mascarene Islands.

Pharmaceutics

• Hieronymus Brunschwygk's Big Book (of Distillation) describes medicinal herbs and the construction of stills for processing them.

Technology

• Martin Waldseemüller (of the Rhineland) produces and describes the first theodolite (which he calls the polimetrum).[4][5][6]

Births

• March 5 – Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer (died 1594)
• approx. date – Robert Recorde, Welsh-born mathematician and physician (died 1558)[7]

Deaths

• February 22 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer (born 1454)
• August 2 – Alessandro Achillini, Italian anatomist (born 1463)
• September 29 – Johannes Engel, German astronomer and physician (born 1453)

References

1. Grun, Bernard (1991). The Timetables of History (3rd ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 229. ISBN 0-671-74919-6.
2. Gingerich, Owen (2004). The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. New York: Walker. ISBN 0-8027-1415-3.
3. Koyré, Alexandre (1973). The Astronomical Revolution: Copernicus – Kepler – Borelli. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-0504-1.
4. In an appendix to Gregorius Reisch's Margarita Philosophica, published in Strasburg.
5. Daumas, Maurice (1989). Scientific Instruments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and Their Makers. London: Portman. ISBN 978-0-7134-0727-3.
6. Mills, John FitzMaurice (1983). Encyclopedia of Antique Scientific Instruments. London: Aurum Press. ISBN 0-906053-40-4.
7. Johnston, Stephen (2004). "Recorde, Robert (c.1512–1558)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/23241. Retrieved 2012-01-26. (subscription or UK public library membership required)