1683 in science

The year 1683 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Geography

• Vincenzo Coronelli completes terrestrial and celestial globes for Louis XIV of France.

Biology

• September 17 – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to the Royal Society of London describing "animalcules" – the first known description of protozoa.

Mathematics

• Based on his discovery of the resultant, Seki Takakazu starts to develop elimination theory in the Kai-fukudai-no-hō (解伏題之法,); and to express the resultant, he develops the notion of the determinant.
• Jacob Bernoulli discovers the mathematical constant e.

Medicine

• Dutch physician Willem ten Rhijne publishes Dissertatio de Arthritide: Mantissa Schematica: De Acupunctura in London, introducing the West to acupuncture and moxibustion.

Technology

• Vauban's manual on fortification, Le Directeur-Général des fortifications, begins publication at The Hague.

Institutions

• May 24 – The Ashmolean Museum opens in Broad Street, Oxford (England) as the world's first purpose-built university museum, including accommodation for the teaching of natural philosophy and a chemistry laboratory. Naturalist Dr. Robert Plot is the first keeper and first professor of chemistry.
• October 15 – First meeting of the Dublin Philosophical Society, established by William Molyneux.

Births

• February 28 – Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, French physicist (died 1757)
• December 23 – François Nicole, French mathematician (died 1758)
• Approximate date
  • Giovanni Poleni, Italian mathematician and physicist (died 1761)
  • Edmund Weaver, English astronomer (died 1748)

Deaths

• May 2 – Stjepan Gradić, Ragusan polymath (born 1613)
• November 10
  • John Collins, English mathematician (born 1625)
  • Robert Morison, Scottish botanist (born 1620)