1596 in science
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The year 1596 in science and technology included some significant events.
Astronomy
- David Fabricius discovers the first non-supernova variable star, Omicron Ceti.
- Johannes Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum is the first published defense of the Copernican (heliocentric) system of planetary motion.
Botany
- Gaspard Bauhin publishes Pinax theatri botanici, an early classified flora.
Mathematics
- Ludolph van Ceulen computes π to twenty decimal places using inscribed and circumscribed polygons.
Medicine
- William Slingsby discovers that water from the Tewitt Well mineral spring at Harrogate in North Yorkshire, England, possesses similar properties to that from Spa, Belgium.
- Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao Gangmu) is published posthumously in an illustrated edition.
Earth sciences
- Abraham Ortelius, in the last edition of his Thesaurus geographicus, considers the possibility of continental drift.
Exploration
- June 17 – Willem Barents makes the first documented discovery of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago.[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bt88AAAAIAAJ&pg=PR12 No Man's Land]
Technology
- John Harington describes the "Ajax", a precursor to the modern flush toilet, in The Metamorphosis of Ajax.
Births
- March 31 – René Descartes (d. 1650), French-born philosopher and mathematician.
- approximate date – Peter Mundy (d. c.1667), English traveller.
Deaths
- January 27 – Sir Francis Drake (b. 1540), English explorer (at sea).
- September 15 – Leonhard Rauwolf (b. either 1535 or 1540), German botanist and physician.
- September – Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser (b. 1540?), Frisian navigator (at sea).