1657 in science

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The year 1657 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Mathematics

• Christiaan Huygens writes the first book to be published on probability theory,^[1] De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ("On Reasoning in Games of Chance").^[2]

Medicine

• Walter Rumsey invents the provang, a baleen instrument which he describes in his Organon Salutis: an instrument to cleanse the stomach.^[3][4]

Technology

• Christiaan Huygens patents his 1656 design for a pendulum clock and the first example is made for him by Salomon Coster at The Hague.^[5]
• approx. date – The anchor escapement for clocks is probably invented by Robert Hooke.^[6][7][8][9]

Institutions

• Accademia del Cimento established in Florence.

Births

• February 11 – Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientific populariser (died 1757)
• approx. date – Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, French fur trader and explorer (died 1704)

Deaths

• June 3 – William Harvey, English physician who discovered the circulation of blood (born 1578)
• June 16 – Fortunio Liceti, Italian Aristotelian scientific polymath (born 1577)
• September 23 – Joachim Jungius, German mathematician, logician and philosopher of science (born 1587)
• October 22 – Cassiano dal Pozzo, Italian scholar and patron (born 1588)
• November – John French, English physician and chemist (born c. 1616)

References

1. "I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably." —Christiaan Huygens, Letter to Pierre Perrault, 'Sur la préface de M. Perrault de son traité del'Origine des fontaines' [1763], Oeuvres Complétes de Christiaan Huygens (1897), Vol. 7, 298. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 163. Quotation selected by W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds., 2005), Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations ISBN 0-19-858409-1 p. 317 quotation 4.
2. Gullberg, Jan. Mathematics from the Birth of Numbers. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 963–965. ISBN 978-0-393-04002-9.
3. "The Coffee Houses of Old London". Retrieved 2011-05-23.
4. Morrice, J. C. (1918). Wales in the Seventeenth Century: its literature and men of letters and action. Bangor: Jarvis & Foster. p. 26. Retrieved 2011-05-23.
5. van den Ende, Hans; et al. (2004). Huygens's Legacy: The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock. Fromanteel Ltd.
6. Milham, Willis I. (1945). Time and Timekeepers. London: Macmillan. p. 146. ISBN 0-7808-0008-7.
7. Glasgow, David (1885). Watch and Clock Making. London: Cassell. p. 293.
8. Headrick, Michael (2002). "Origin and Evolution of the Anchor Clock Escapement". Control Systems magazine (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) 22 (2). Archived from the original on 2009-10-25. Retrieved 2007-06-06.
9. Reid, Thomas (1832). Treatise on Clock and Watch-making, Theoretical and Practical. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea. p. 184.