Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/November 12
- 1742 – Death of Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist (b. 1660)
- 1795 – Birth of Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist (d. 1856)
- 1842 – Birth of John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919)
- 1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic
- 1886 – Birth of Günther Dyhrenfurth, German born geologist, geographer and Himalayan explorer (d. 1975)
- 1927 – Birth of Yutaka Taniyama, Japanese mathematician (d. 1958)
- 1944 – Death of Otto Blumenthal, German mathematician (b. 1876)
- 1949 – Birth of Sinyan Shen (沈星扬 or 沈星揚), American physicist and classical composer
- 2003 – With 501 km/h (311 mph) Shanghai Transrapid sets up a new world record for commercial railway systems