Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/November 17
- 1493 – Christopher Columbus lands on Puerto Rico
- 1790 – Birth of August Ferdinand Möbius, German mathematician (d. 1868)
- 1878 – Birth of Lise Meitner, Austrian physicist (d. 1968)
- 1902 – Birth of Eugene Wigner, Hungarian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1995)
- 1922 – Birth of Stanley Cohen, American biochemist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 1940 – Death of Raymond Pearl, American biologist (b. 1879)
- 1947 – American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain observed the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th Century
- 1970 – Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft
- 1990 – Death of Robert Hofstadter, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915)