1693 in science

Actuarial science

• Edmond Halley publishes an article in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on life annuities featuring a life table constructed on the basis of statistics from Breslau provided by Caspar Neumann.

  Botany

• Publication of Charles Plumier's first work, Description des plantes de l'Amérique, in Paris, principally devoted to ferns.

  Mathematics

• Bernard Frénicle de Bessy's Des quarrez ou tables magiques, a treatise on magic squares, is published posthumously, describing all 880 essentially different normal magic squares of order 4.

  Physiology and medicine

• Flemish anatomist Philip Verheyen, in his widely used text Corporis Humani Anatomia, is the first to record the name of the Achilles tendon.

  Births

• March – James Bradley, Astronomer Royal

  Deaths

• February 18 – Elias Tillandz, Swedish physician and botanist in Finland
• October 4 – Sir Thomas Clayton, English physician, academic and politician
• December 22 – Elisabeth Hevelius, Danzig astronomer