1683 in science

Geography

• Vincenzo Coronelli completes terrestrial and celestial globes for Louis XIV of France.

  Biology

• September 17 – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to the Royal Society of London describing "animalcules" – the first known description of protozoa.

  Mathematics

• Based on his discovery of the resultant, Seki Takakazu starts to develop elimination theory in the Kai-fukudai-no-hō ; and to express the resultant, he develops the notion of the determinant.
• Jacob Bernoulli discovers the mathematical constant e.

  Medicine

• Dutch physician Willem ten Rhijne publishes Dissertatio de Arthritide: Mantissa Schematica: De Acupunctura in London, introducing the West to acupuncture and moxibustion.

  Technology

• Vauban's manual on fortification, Le Directeur-Général des fortifications, begins publication at The Hague.

  Institutions

• May 24 – The Ashmolean Museum opens in Broad Street, Oxford as the world's first purpose-built university museum, including accommodation for the teaching of natural philosophy and a chemistry laboratory. Naturalist Dr. Robert Plot is the first keeper and first professor of chemistry.
• October 15 – First meeting of the Dublin Philosophical Society, established by William Molyneux.

  Births

• February 28 – Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, French physicist
• December 23 – François Nicole, French mathematician
• Approximate date
• * Giovanni Poleni, Italian mathematician and physicist
• * Edmund Weaver, English astronomer

  Deaths

• November 10
• * John Collins, English mathematician
• * Robert Morison, Scottish botanist