title: 1640 in science
text: # 1640 in science
  
  The year 1640 in science and technology involved some significant events.
  
  ## Botany
  
  * John Parkinson publishes Theatrum Botanicum:The Theater of Plants, or, An Herbal of a Large Extent.
  
  ## Mathematics
  
  * The 16-year-old Blaise Pascal demonstrates the properties of the hexagrammum mysticum in his Essai pour les coniques which he sends to Mersenne.
  * October 18 – Fermat states his "little theorem" in a letter to Frénicle de Bessy: if p is a prime number, then for any integer a, $a^p$ − a will be divisible by p.
  * December 25 – Fermat claims a proof of the theorem on sums of two squares in a letter to Mersenne ("Fermat's Christmas Theorem"): an odd prime p is expressible as the sum of two squares.
  
  ## Technology
  
  * The micrometer is developed.
  * A form of bayonet is invented; in later years it will gradually replace the pike.
  * The reticle telescope is developed and initiates the birth of sharpshooting.
  
  ## Births
  
  * April 1 – Georg Mohr, Danish mathematician (died 1697)
  * December 13 (bapt.) – Robert Plot, English naturalist and chemist (died 1696)
  * Elias Tillandz, Swedish physician and botanist in Finland (died 1693)
  
  ## Deaths
  
  * December 22 – Jean de Beaugrand, French mathematician (born c. 1584)
  