1626 in science

Physiology and medicine

• Posthumous publication of Adriaan van den Spiegel's De formato foetu in Venice with illustrations by Giulio Casserio and including the first observation of milk in female breasts at birth.

  Technology

• Cornelius Vermuyden commissioned to drain Hatfield Chase on the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, England.

  Births

• February 18 or 19 – Francesco Redi, Italian physician, biologist and poet
• March 1 – Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, French horticulturalist
• April 17 – Ole Borch, Danish chemist, physician, grammarian and poet
• approx. date – Pietro Mengoli, Italian mathematician

  Deaths

• February 11 – Pietro Cataldi, Italian mathematician
• April 9 – Francis Bacon, English philosopher and a founder of modern scientific research
• April 11 – Marin Getaldić or Ghetaldi, Ragusan politician, mathematician and physicist, contributed to the emergence of new algebra
• April 14 – Gaspare Aselli, Italian anatomist
• June 21 – Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt, Flemish-born humanist, priest, physician and mineralogist
• October 30 – Willebrord Snellius, Dutch mathematician and physicist who devised the basic law of refraction, known as Snell's law
• December 10 – Edmund Gunter, English mathematician

  Unknown date

• Salomon de Caus, French mechanical and hydraulic engineer