1679 in science

Botany

• Establishment of Hortus Botanicus.

  Mathematics

• Samuel Morland publishes The Doctrine of Interest, both Simple & Compound, probably the first tables produced with the aid of a calculating machine.

  Medicine

• Great Plague of Vienna.
• Franciscus Sylvius' Opera Medica, published posthumously, recognizes scrofula and phthisis as forms of tuberculosis.

  Technology

• Pierre-Paul Riquet excavates Malpas Tunnel on the Canal du Midi in Hérault, France, Europe's first navigable canal tunnel.

  Publications

• Publication in Paris of the first of Edme Mariotte's Essays de physique: De la végétation des plantes, a pioneering discussion of plant physiology; and De la nature de l'air, a statement of Boyle's law.
• Publication by the Paris Observatory of the world's first national ephemeris almanac, the Connaissance des tems, compiled by Jean Picard.

  Births

• January 24 – Christian Wolff, German philosopher, mathematician and scientist

  Deaths

• January 14 – Jacques de Billy, French Jesuit mathematician