1751★★★★★
First volume of the Encyclopédie
Diderot and d'Alembert publish the first volume of the Encyclopédie, a defining work of the Enlightenment.
CultureScience· France
Timeline
7 events18th century
19th century
- 1822★★★★★
Champollion deciphers Egyptian hieroglyphs
Using the Rosetta Stone, Jean-François Champollion announces his decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
ScienceCulture· France, Egypt - July 6, 1885★★★★★
Pasteur's rabies vaccine is first used on a human
Louis Pasteur administers his rabies vaccine to Joseph Meister, a boy bitten by a rabid dog, who survives.
ScienceDisease· France - 1898★★★★★
The Curies discover polonium and radium
Marie and Pierre Curie discover two new radioactive elements, polonium and radium, advancing the study of radioactivity.
Science· France
20th century
- 1983★★★★★
Discovery of HIV
A team at the Pasteur Institute including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier reports the virus later named HIV, the cause of AIDS.
ScienceDisease· France
21st century
- July 4, 2012★★★★★
Discovery of the Higgs boson announced
CERN announces that the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have observed a particle consistent with the Higgs boson.
Science· Switzerland, France - December 25, 2021★★★★★
Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope, a NASA–ESA–CSA collaboration, is launched from French Guiana to observe the early universe in infrared.
ScienceTechnology· United States, France