1596 in science
# 1596 in science

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.

## 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).
