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

  Deaths

• April 6 – Joachim Vadian, Swiss physician and polymath
• May 6 − Johannes Baptista Montanus Italian physician and humanist
• August 8 – Fray Tomás de Berlanga, Spanish Bishop of Panama and discoverer of the Galápagos Islands