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)