Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/October 17
- 1563 – Birth of Jodocus Hondius, Flemish cartographer (d. 1611)
- 1604 - Kepler's Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes that an exceptionally bright star had suddenly appeared in the constellation. Ophiuchus, which turned out to be the last supernova to have been observed in our own galaxy, the Milky Way
- 1757 – Death of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French scientist (b. 1683)
- 1780 – Death of William Cookworthy, English chemist (b. 1705)
- 1887 – Death of Gustav Kirchhoff, German physicist (b. 1824)
- 1888 - Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie)
- 1931 – Death of Alfons Maria Jakob, German neurologist (b. 1884)
- 1933 - Albert Einstein, fleeing Nazi Germany, moves to the U.S.
- 1934 – Death of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist and neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1852)
- 1936 – Birth of Hiroo Kanamori, Japanese seismologist
- 1963 – Death of Jacques Hadamard, French mathematician (b. 1865)
- 1999 – Death of Nicholas Metropolis, Greek-American mathematician, physicist and computer scientist (b. 1915)