1561 in science

Cartography and navigation

• Bartolomeu Velho produces a for Sebastian of Portugal.
• Richard Eden translates Martín Cortés de Albacar's Arte de navigar as The Arte of Navigation which becomes the first manual of navigation in English.

  Medicine and physiology

• Gabriele Falloppio publishes Observationes anatomicae in Venice, the only work of his printed during his lifetime.
• Ambroise Paré publishes Anatomie universelle du corps humain and La méthode curative des playes et fractures de la test humaine in Paris.
• Smallpox epidemic in Chile.

  Births

• January 6 – Thomas Fincke, Danish mathematician
• January 22 – Francis Bacon, English philosopher of science
• March 29 – Sanctorius, Istrian physiologist
• August 4 – John Harington, English inventor
• August 24 – Bartholomaeus Pitiscus, German trigonometrist
• August 25 – Philippe van Lansberge, Flemish astronomer
• September 29 – Adriaan van Roomen, Flemish mathematician
• October 8 – Edward Wright, English mathematician

  Deaths