1605 in science

Exploration

• Habitation at Port-Royal established by France under Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, the first European colonization of Nova Scotia in North America ; the Gregorian calendar is adopted.

  Chemistry

• First recorded use of the word Chemistry in English, in Thomas Tymme's The Practice of Chymicall and Hermeticall Physicke, translated from Joseph Duchesne.
• The phenomenon of mechanoluminescence is first discovered by Sir Francis Bacon from scratching sugar with a knife.
• Michal Sedziwój publishes the alchemical treatise A New Light of Alchemy which proposes the existence of the "food of life" within air, much later recognized as oxygen.

  Technology

• Chartreuse is invented, a liqueur still made by Carthusian monks, named for the great charterhouse.

  Births

• October 19 – Thomas Browne, English physician and encyclopedist
• Martin van den Hove, Dutch astronomer
• approx. date – Semyon Dezhnyov, Pomor navigator

  Deaths

• May 4 – Ulisse Aldrovandi, Bolognese naturalist
• December 29 – John Davis, English explorer
• Roger Marbeck, English royal physician