Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/February 28

February 28:

 * 1552 - Birth of Joost Bürgi, Swiss clockmaker (d. 1632)


 * 1675 - Birth of Guillaume Delisle, French cartographer (d. 1726)


 * 1683 - Birth of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French scientist (d. 1757)


 * 1700 - Today is followed by March 1 in Sweden, thus creating the Swedish calendar


 * 1704 - Birth of Louis Godin, French astronomer (d. 1760)


 * 1840 - Birth of Henri Duveyrier, French explorer (d. 1892)


 * 1857 - Death of André Dumont, Belgian geologist (b. 1809)


 * 1878 - Birth of Pierre Fatou, French mathematician (d. 1929)


 * 1901 - Birth of Linus Pauling, American chemist and activist, Nobel laureate (d. 1994)


 * 1915 - Birth of Peter Medawar, Brazilian-born scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1987)


 * 1930 - Birth of Leon Neil Cooper, American physicist, Nobel laureate


 * 1932 - Death of Guillaume Bigourdan, French astronomer (b. 1851)


 * 1935 - Nylon is invented by Wallace Carothers


 * 1936 - Death of Charles Nicolle, French bacteriologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1866)


 * 1939 - Birth of Daniel C. Tsui, Chinese-born physicist, Nobel laureate


 * 1948 - Birth of Steven Chu, American physicist, Nobel laureate


 * 1953 - James D. Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April Nature (pub. April 2)