859

Fatima al-Firhi founds first degree-granting university in Fez, Morocco. 

1413

University of St. Andrews founded, likely the first to issue professional degrees (MD). 

1522

Magellan ends first voyage around the world. 

1543

Nicolaus Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).  

1640

Isaac Walton The Compleat Angler (fishing and conservation).  

1661

John Evelyn presents King Charles II with Fumifugium – a discussion on air pollution in London likening the city to the “suburbs of hell” (recommends switch to cleaner fuels).  

1664

John Evelyn publishes Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty’s Dominions (highly influential for timber management).  

1679

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in a letter to Royal Society suggests Earth’s maximum carrying capacity is 13.4 billion humans. 

1755

‘Great Lisbon Earthquake’ (informal start of seismology). 

1824 and 1827

Joseph Fourier publishes articles giving rise to concept of greenhouse effect for planet earth.  

1831

Charles Darwin sets sail on HMS Beagle (a five year voyage).  

1835

Darwin experiences a major earthquake in Chile, shaping his understanding of Earth’s geology (which shaped his theory of natural selection). Arrived in the Galapagos six months later.  

1845

Alexander von Humboldt Volume I of Kosmos published.  

1858

Alfred Wallace publishes on natural selection and Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species (1859). 

1862

Louis Pasteur establishes germ theory.

1863

John Tyndall gives public lecture, On Radiation Through the Earth’s Atmosphere, explaining the greenhouse effect.

1866

Ernst Haeckel, a German zoologist, coins the term ecology.  

1896

Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, calculates how changes in levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide could alter temperature through the greenhouse effect (Nobel Laureate 1903). 

1912

Alfred Wegener introduces concept of ‘Continental Drift’, corroborated by Tuzo Wilson, in Theory of Plate Tectonics (“Evidence from Islands on the Spreading of Ocean Floors”. Nature 1963. Term Pangaea coined in a 1927 symposium).  

1929

Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.  

1933

Gerhard Domagk synthesizes prontosil (Nobel Laureate 1939) ushering in wide spread use of antibiotics.  

1955

Watson and Crick publish double helix structure of DNA.  

1956

Minamata disease (mercury poisoning) first discovered in Minamata, Japan.  

1958

John K Galbraith, The Affluent Society published.

1959

Moses Abramovitz questions if GDP accurately measures a society’s overall well-being.  

1962

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring and Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions published.  

1968

Publication of Paul Ehrlich’s, Population Bomb. 

Garrett Hardin introduces Tragedy of the Commons (follow-on essay in 1976, carrying capacity as an ethical concept, ‘Lifeboat Ethics’). 

1971

Pierre Wack, begins scenario planning at Royal Dutch Shell.  

1972

Club of Rome publishes Limits to Growth.  

1973

E.F. Schumacher publishes, Small is Beautiful. 

1976

UN Habitat I, Vancouver. 

1979

Three Mile Island nuclear accident; James Lovelock’s, The Gaia Hypothesis. 

Ralf Dahrendorf Life Chances. 

1985

Antarctica ozone hole discovered. 

2000

Paul Crutzen (Nobel Laureate) with others popularizes the term Anthropocene (the geologic epoch ‘Age of Man’ to replace the Holocene). 

UN Millennium Development Goals. 

Carbon Disclosure Project; Jantzi Social Index (securities, Canada).  

Yale’s Environmental Sustainability Index (becomes Environmental Performance Index, 2006). 

2001

Human Genome Project publishes working draft. 

2006

Nicholas Stern Review (makes economic case for climate action).  

2007

Tesco, a UK grocer, pledges CO2 labelling for all products (discontinued 2012).  

2009

Concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ introduced in journal Nature. 

2025

CRISPR gene editing leads to medical breakthroughs.