Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/May 17

May 17
 * 1749 - Birth of Edward Jenner, English physician and developer of the smallpox vaccine (d. 1823)
 * 1758 - Birth of John St Aubyn, British fossil collector (d. 1839)
 * 1765 - Death of Alexis Claude Clairault, French mathematician (b. 1713)
 * 1897 - Birth of Odd Hassel, Norwegian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
 * 1902 - Archaeologist Spyridon Stais finds the Antikythera mechanism.
 * 1916 - Death of Boris Borisovich Galitzine, Russian physicist (b. 1862)
 * 1943 - The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC.
 * 1969 - The Soviet spaceprobe Venera 6 begins its descent into the atmosphere of Venus, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.
 * 2004 - The Stockholm Convention, an international treaty limiting the use of DDT and other persistent organic pollutants, goes into effect.