Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/November 17

November 17:

 * 1493 – Christopher Columbus lands on Puerto Rico


 * 1790 – Birth of August Ferdinand Möbius, German mathematician (d. 1868)


 * 1878 – Birth of Lise Meitner, Austrian physicist (d. 1968)


 * 1902 – Birth of Eugene Wigner, Hungarian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1995)


 * 1922 – Birth of Stanley Cohen, American biochemist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine


 * 1940 – Death of Raymond Pearl, American biologist (b. 1879)


 * 1947 – American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain observed the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th Century


 * 1970 – Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft


 * 1990 – Death of Robert Hofstadter, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915)