Timeline of Events
If instead of the full timeline you just want a list of the events that you can click the name of and get the mini paper, then please click here!
1500s and 1600s
Art Piece: Circular Dish with Phoenix-and-Cloud Decor, Chinese, Jiajing period, 1522-1566 [26]
Scientific Paper: A Production of Amino Acids under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions [124]
1543: First printing of Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres [44]
Art Piece: The Planets: Saturn, Petrus Firens, 17th Century [142]
Paper: Long-term integrations and stability of planetary orbits in our Solar system [82]
1551-1558 and 1587: Conrad Gesner’s History of the Animals published [33]
Art Piece: [Mosaic Pavement with Birds, from Feleet Village Building, Roman, 4th-5th Century CE [157]
Paper: [Review: Animal Taxonomy: Theory and Practice] [165]
1620: Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum published [133]
Art Piece: Sketch for “The Discoverer” Fresco, Assembly Chamber, State Capitol, Albany, New York, William Morris Hunt, 1878 [158]
1618-1621: Printing of Johannes Kepler’s Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae [96]
Art Piece: The Seven Planets, Johann Sadeler I, Netherlandish, c. 1585 [86]
Paper: GW Ori: circumtriple rings and planets [69]
1667: Nicolas Steno dissects the head of a shark and publishes his findings [129]
Art Piece: Youth Saved from a Shark, Valentine Green after John Singleton Copley, 1779 [191]
Paper: Tooth morphology elucidates shark evolution across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction [185]
1668-1704: John Ray’s Historia Plantarum published [154]
Art Piece: A Serpentine Plant (Ophioxylum Serpentinum), Aert Schouman, 18th Century [4]
Paper: Plant diversity in a changing world: Status, trends, and conservation needs [34]
1700s
1733-1734: Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man published [144]
Paper: How scientists perceive the evolutionary origin of human traits: Results of a survey study [186]
1735: First edition of Carl Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae printed in the Netherlands [109]
Art Piece: Stamp Seal in the Shape of a Recumbent Bull: Two Dogs?, Mesopotamian, c. 3100-2900 BCE [119]
Paper: The integrative future of taxonomy [137]
1776: The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith is published [163]
Art Piece: Forty Litrae of Syracuse, Greek, 344 BCE-335 BCE [67]
Paper: Increasing returns, monopolistic competition, and international trade [101]
Art Piece: Rocky Mountains, “Lander’s Peak”, Albert Bierstadt, 1863 [5]
Paper: Uniformitarianism. An Inquiry into Principle, Theory, and Method in Geohistory and Biohistory [161]
1794: Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s grandfather, publishes Zoonomia [203]
Art Piece: Three Recumbent Animals on a Plaque, Near Eastern, 9th-7th century BCE [128]
Paper: The Early “Evolution” of “Punctuated Equilibria” [51]
1798: Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population is published anonymously; Malthus is later revealed to be the author [184] [115]
Art Piece: Government, City: United States: Social Conditions, United States: Census of 1900: Proportion of Urban to Total Population, by States and Territories, at each Census., Unidentified Artist, c. 1903 [188]
Paper: Population, poverty and economic development [162]
1800s
1802: William Paley’s work, Natural Theology is published, giving the famous “Divine Watchmaker” analogy [68] [139]
Art Piece: Carved Tall-Case Hall Clock with Pendulum, Dutch, 18th Century [50]
Paper: A fairytale creation or the beginning of everything: Students’ pre-instructional conceptions about the Big Bang theory [11]
1809: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s Philosophie Zoologique is published [83]
Art Piece: Giraffes, John Bernard Flannagan, 20th Century [90]
Paper: Lamarckism and epigenetic inheritance: a clarification [111]
1816-1817: Georges Cuvier’s The Animal Kingdom published [37]
Art Piece: Sketches of Skeletons: An Animal and Hunchback, Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, c. 1829-1830 [57]
Paper: Evolution of the vertebrate skeleton: morphology, embryology, and development [72]
1830: Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology published [112]
Paper: Building mountain biodiversity: Geological and evolutionary processes [153]
1844: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is published anonymously; the author is later revealed to be Robert Chambers [194]
Art Piece: Head of a Bearded Man, Michelangelo, 15th-16th century [122]
Paper: Competition in Science: Links Between Publication Pressure, Grant Pressure and the Academic Job Market [195]
Art Piece: Wisdom Triumphing over Death, Evil, and Vice, Bernart Prooijs, 1594 [14]
Paper: The origin and early evolution of mitochondria [66]
1859: Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is published [40]
Art Piece: The Summons, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1856 [52]
Paper: Origin and evolution of the adaptive immune system: genetic events and selective pressures [59]
1869: Friedrich Miescher isolates “nuclein” from cell nuclei [1] [29]
Art Piece: Alchemist’s Laboratory, André Louis Victor Texier, 19th Century [10]
Paper: Friedrich Miescher and the discovery of DNA [38]
1900s to now
1943: Erwin Schrodinger discusses that genetic material most likely resembles an “aperiodic crystal” [175]
Art Piece: Conical Shape. Crystal of Said Hippuric Acid Compound, Carl Struwe, 1927 [21]
1951-1953: Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin investigate the structure of DNA; the structure is eventually revealed to be an antiparallel double helix, with Watson and Crick publishing their notable paper in 1953 [196] [17]
Art Piece: Breakthrough, Denis-Auguste-Marie Raffet, 1835 [46]
Paper: Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid [196]
1959: Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery published [147]
Art Piece: Discovery of the Remains of Raphael in the Pantheon in Rome, Stéphane Pannemaker, 19th Century [167]
Paper: The most important application of science [159]
1961: The Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment deciphers the first codon in genetic code [170]
Art Piece: Discovery of the Golden Fleece, René Boyvin, 16th Century [155]
Paper: The dependence of cell-free protein synthesis in E. coli upon naturally occurring or synthetic polyribonucleotides [132]
1962: Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is published [104]
Art Piece: Allegory in Honor of the Roman College, Claude Mellan, 17th Century [28]
Paper: Socioeconomic gaps in science achievement [15]
1973: Theodosius Dobzhansky’s essay Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution is published [49]
Art Piece: View of the subterranean foundation of the mausoleum, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 18th Century [64]
Paper: Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution [49]
2020: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for CRISPR [106]
Art Piece: Chemistry Building, Brookhaven National Lab, Per Brandin, 1978 [141]
Paper: A programmable dual-RNA-guided DNA endonuclease in adaptive bacterial immunity [85]