1660 in science
# 1660 in science

The year 1660 in science and technology involved some significant events.

## Events

* November 28 – At Gresham College in London, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Robert Moray, meet after a lecture by Wren and resolve to found "a College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning", which will become the Royal Society.

## Botany

* John Ray publishes Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium in Cambridge, the first flora of an English county.

## Mathematics

* The popular English-language edition by Isaac Barrow of Euclid's Elements is published in London.

## Physics

* Robert Boyle publishes New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (the second edition in 1662 will contain Boyle's Law).

## Births

* February 19 – Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist (died 1742)
* April 16 – Hans Sloane, Ulster Scots-born collector and physician (died 1753)
* March 15 – Olof Rudbeck the Younger, Swedish naturalist (died 1740)
* May 27 (bapt.) – Francis Hauksbee, English scientific instrument maker and experimentalist (died 1713)
* approx. date – Edward Lhuyd, Welsh naturalist (died 1709)
* Date unknown – Jeanne Dumée, French astronomer (born 1660)

## Deaths

* May 29 – Frans van Schooten, Dutch Cartesian mathematician (born 1615)
* June 30 – William Oughtred, English mathematician who invented the slide rule (born 1574)
* Jean-Jacques Chifflet, French physician and antiquary (born 1588)
* Walter Rumsey, Welsh judge and amateur scientist (born 1584)
