Eureka! Try This Quiz on Europe's Scientific Revolution

In 1543, a Belgian scientist named Andreas Vesalius published “De Humani Corporis Fabrica,” a scientific text on human anatomy, based on empirical observations made during various human dissections. Vesalius deepened humanity’s understanding of the body, and essentially founded the scientific field of anatomy.

Although Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe never converted to Copernicus’ heliocentrism, his groundbreaking observations at Uraniborg, an observatory built on the island of Ven — gifted to Brahe by Frederick II in 1576 — were essential to new astronomical discoveries. Johannes Kepler, who once served as Brahe’s assistant, discovered his Laws of Planetary Motion in part because of Brahe’s meticulous stargazing.

One revolution often leads to another, and in 1589, William Lee invented a machine that knitted stockings in the hopes of saving his wife from having to do the work. One of the first examples of automation, Lee’s knitting machine was controversial — Queen Elizabeth I feared it’d put knitters out of work — but it foreshadowed the future of the textile industry during the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840).

European scientists made significant breakthroughs in the 1500s, but not everyone — especially the Catholic Church — was ready to hear them. Michael Servetus, a cartographer from Spain, and Italians Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno, were all persecuted for their ideas. While Galileo was forced to recant his heliocentrism, both Serventus and Bruno lost their lives for their groundbreaking theories and scientific work.

The 16th-century saw huge advancements in the field of algebra, including Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano’s general cubic equations and French mathematician François Viète’s formula for nested radicals. The word “algebra” itself is derived from the Arabic manuscript “Kitab al-Jabr,” written by Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, a 9th-century Muslim scholar whose known today as “the father of algebra.”

Today’s world map exists because of 16th-century Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. In 1569, Mercator had the idea of taking the known landmasses of the world and flattening them onto a two-dimensional map. Although the shape of the continents were far from accurate, this map, known as the Mercator Projection, became an indispensable navigational tool and brought mapmaking into a new era.

John Dee served in Queen Elizabeth I’s court, where he was instrumental in teaching England’s navigators, who were bound for the New World about astronomical navigation. During his lifetime, Dee translated scientific texts into English and coined the term “British Empire.” His incredible intellect, as well as his interest in the supernatural, provided the template for William Shakespeare’s Prospero in “The Tempest.”

Europe’s Scientific Revolution is bookended by two major moments. The first is the development of heliocentricity in the mid-16th century, and the last is the publication of Isaac Newton’s “Principia,” introducing the laws of motion and universal gravitation, in 1687. The theory of evolution came much later when Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,” a work that went against 1400 years of geocentrism and Catholic Church doctrine. The idea of a sun-centric solar system was so transformative that it remains one of the most pivotal moments in science. It inspired future astronomers, such as Galileo and Johannes Kepler, to follow in Copernicus’ footsteps.

Born in 1642, Isaac Newton was a participant in the late stages of Europe’s Scientific Revolution — which lasted from 1543 to 1687, and marked the beginning of modern science. Newton once referred to himself as “standing upon the shoulders of giants,” referring to the influential scientists of the 16th century.