1580 in science

The year 1580 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.

Astronomy

 * The Constantinople Observatory of Taqi ad-Din is destroyed by Sultan Selim II.

Exploration

 * September 26 – Francis Drake in the Golden Hind sails into Plymouth having completed the second circumnavigation of the world, westabout, begun in 1577.

Medicine

 * Severe outbreak of smallpox in Venezuela: it strikes the Caracas and other Indians in the North and greatly weakens Indian resistance to the Spanish colonizing of the region.

Geology

 * April 6 – Dover Straits earthquake.

Births

 * January 12 – Jan Baptist van Helmont, Flemish chemist (died 1644)
 * December 1 – Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, French astronomer (died 1637)
 * Peter Crüger, German polymath (died 1639)
 * Willebrord Snellius, Dutch mathematician and physicist who devised the basic law of refraction, Snell's law (died 1626)

Deaths

 * May 3 – Thomas Tusser, English chorister and agriculturalist (born c. 1524)
 * September 15 – Friedrich Risner, German mathematician (born c. 1533)
 * Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, Sicilian anatomist (born 1510).