1676 in science
The year 1676 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Astronomy
- Summer – The Royal Greenwich Observatory, designed by Christopher Wren, is completed near London.
- December 7 – Danish astronomer Ole Rømer measures the speed of light by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons, obtaining a speed of 140,000 miles per second.
- Edmond Halley arrives on the island of Saint Helena, having left the University of Oxford, and sets up an astronomical observatory to catalogue stars from the Southern Hemisphere.
Biology
- Antony Van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria, observed with the microscope.
- Francis Willughby's Ornithologiae is published by John Ray, the foundation of scientific ornithology.
Medicine
- William Briggs publishes an anatomy of the eye, Ophthalmographia, at Cambridge.
- Thomas Sydenham publishes the textbook Observationes mediciae, the enlarged 3rd edition of his Methodus curandi febres.
Paleontology
- The first fossilised bone of what is now known to be a dinosaur is discovered in England by Robert Plot, the femur of a Megalosaurus from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
Physics
- Robert Hooke first reveals Hooke's law as a Latin anagram.
Technology
- July 7 – The first clocks using a form of deadbeat escapement, constructed by Thomas Tompion to a design by Richard Towneley, are installed at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Births
- May 28 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician
- Caleb Threlkeld, Irish botanist
- Maria Clara Eimmart, German astronomer, engraver and designer