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.

September 17 – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to the Royal Society of London describing "animalcules" – the first known description of protozoa.{{cite web|last=Anderson |first=Douglas|title=Wrote Letter 39 of 1683-09-17 (AB 76) to Francis Aston|url=http://lensonleeuwenhoek.net/content/wrote-letter-39-1683-09-17-ab-76-francis-aston|work=Lens on Leeuwenhoek|access-date=2016-09-26|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160820153516/http://lensonleeuwenhoek.net/content/wrote-letter-39-1683-09-17-ab-76-francis-aston|archivedate=2016-08-20}}

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.{{cite book|last=Eves|first=Howard|year=1990|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PXvwAAAAMAAJ&q=seki&pg=PA405|title=An Introduction to the History of Mathematics|location=Philadelphia|publisher=Saunders College|edition=6th|isbn=0-03-029558-0|page=405}}
Jacob Bernoulli discovers the mathematical constant e.{{cite book|author1=Boyer, Carl|author2=Merzbach, Uta|author2-link=Uta Merzbach|title=A History of Mathematics|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema00boye|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema00boye/page/419 419]|publisher=Wiley|year=1991|isbn=9780471543978 |edition=2nd}}

Dutch physician Willem ten Rhijne publishes Dissertatio de Arthritide: Mantissa Schematica: De Acupunctura in London, introducing the West to acupuncture and moxibustion.

Vauban's manual on fortification, Le Directeur-Général des fortifications, begins publication at The Hague.

May 24 – The Ashmolean Museum opens in Broad Street, Oxford (England) as the world's first purpose-built university museum,{{cite web|title=Ashmolean Museum|work=The Invention of Museum Anthropology|publisher=Pitt Rivers Museum|location=Oxford|url=http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/sma/index.php/primary-documents/primary-documents-ashmolean-museum.html|year=2012|accessdate=2019-05-25}} 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.{{cite book|title=Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland, 1650–1940|first1=Greta|last1=Jones|first2=Elizabeth|last2=Malcolm|year=1999|publisher=Cork University Press|page=91|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LPZhfPHLiNQC&dq=%22Dublin+Philosophical+Society%22&pg=PA91|isbn=978-1-85918-230-7}}{{cite journal|title=Memoir of the Dublin Philosophical Society of 1683|authorlink=William Wilde|first=W. R.|last=Wilde|journal=Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy|publisher=Royal Irish Academy|location=Dublin|volume=3|date=1844–47|pages=160–76|jstor=20489545}}{{cite web|first=T. D.|last=Spearman|year=1992|title=400 Years of Mathematics|url=http://www.maths.tcd.ie/about/400Hist/6.php|publisher=Trinity College Dublin|accessdate=2014-01-09}}