title: 1551 in science
text: # 1551 in science
  
  ## Astronomy
  
  * Publication of Erasmus Reinhold's ephemeris, the Tabulae prutenicae, helping to disseminate Copernican methods of astronomical calculation.
  
  ## Botany
  
  * Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi begins to collect plants for a herbarium.
  * William Turner publishes the first part of A New Herball, wherin are conteyned the names of herbes... in London.
  
  ## Mathematics
  
  * Georg Joachim Rheticus publishes Canon of the Science of Triangles.
  
  ## Medicine
  
  * By July – Fifth and last outbreak of sweating sickness in England. Dr. John Caius writes the first full contemporary account of the symptoms of the disease.
  * Conrad Gessner is the first to describe adipose tissue.
  
  ## Zoology
  
  * Pierre Belon publishes Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons.
  * Conrad Gessner begins publication of his encyclopedic illustrated Historiae animalium in Zurich.
  
  ## Publications
  
  * Martín Cortés de Albacar publishes Breve compendio de la esfera y del arte de navegar in Spain, an influential work in cosmography, proposing spherical charts and mentioning magnetic deviation and the existence of magnetic poles.
  
  ## Births
  
  * approx. date – Timothy Bright, English physician (died 1615)
  
  ## Deaths
  
  * April 6 – Joachim Vadian, Swiss physician and polymath (born 1484)
  * May 6 − Johannes Baptista Montanus Italian physician and humanist (born 1498)
  * August 8 – Fray Tomás de Berlanga, Spanish Bishop of Panama and discoverer of the Galápagos Islands (born 1487)
  