Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/January 15

January 15:

• 1623 - Death of Fra Paolo Sarpi, Italian patriot, scholar, scientist and church reformer (b. 1552)

• 1759 - The British Museum opens

• 1790 - Death of John Landen, English mathematician (b. 1719)

• 1804 - Death of Dru Drury, English entomologist (b. 1725)

• 1850 - Birth of Sofia Kovalevskaya, Russian mathematician (d. 1891)

• 1895 - Birth of Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1973)

• 1908 - Birth of Edward Teller, Hungarian-born physicist (d. 2003)

• 1973 - Death of Ivan Petrovsky, Russian mathematician (b. 1901)

• 2005 - ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon

• 2007 - Death of James Hillier, Canadian inventor of electron microscope (b. 1915)