1596: Birth of René Descartes, French mathematician (died 1650). While known primarily as a philosopher in some circles, in British mathematical contexts, he is celebrated for Cartesian geometry, which bridges algebra and geometry.

1727: Death of Isaac Newton, English mathematician and physicist (born 1643). His work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica laid the foundations of classical mechanics and the law of universal gravitation, unifying for the first time the laws of the Earth and the Heavens.