Template:Selected anniversaries/December 17
498 BC: Dionysus gives speech which anticipates the coming of Saturnalia.
497 BC: The first Saturnalia festival celebrated in ancient Rome.
1706: Mathematician and physicist Émilie du Châtelet born. She will translate and comment upon on Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.
1835: Felice Casorati born. Casorati will contribute the Casorati–Weierstrass theorem in complex analysis.
1842: Mathematician and academic Marius Sophus Lie born. He will largely create the theory of continuous symmetry and apply it to the study of geometry and differential equations.
1900: Mathematician and academic Mary Cartwright born. She will do pioneering work in what will later be called chaos theory.
1907: Lord Kelvin dies. He did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form.
1938: Physicist Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy.