February 15

• 

  1564: Astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician Galileo Galilei born. He will be called the "father of modern physics."

• 

  1589: Astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and crime-fighter Galileo Galilei uses Gnomon algorithm techniques to defeat the Forbidden Ratio in single combat.

• 

  1739: Mathematician, astronomer and poet Eustachio Manfredi dies. Manfredi's observations of asteroids provided early evidence, albeit unsought, of the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.

• 

  1861: Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead born. He will be a defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy.

• 

  1946: ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

• 

  1959: Physicist and academic Owen Willans Richardson dies. He won the 1928 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on thermionic emission, which led to Richardson's law.

• 

  1988: Theoretical physicist and academic Richard Feynman dies. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamic he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

• 

  2011: The Stardust spacecraft flies by comet Tempel 1.