Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/October 5
- 1565 – Death of Lodovico Ferrari, Italian mathematician (b. 1522)
- 1713 – Birth of Denis Diderot, French philosopher and encyclopedist (d. 1784)
- 1777 – Death of Ján Andrej Segner, Slovak and German mathematician, physicist, and physician (b. 1704)
- 1781 – Birth of Bernard Bolzano, Czech mathematician and philosopher (d. 1848)
- 1882 – Birth of Robert Goddard, American rocket scientist (d. 1945)
- 1903 – Birth of M. King Hubbert, American geophysicist (d. 1989)
- 1905 - Wilbur Wright pilots Wright Flyer III in a flight of 24 miles in 39 minutes, a world record that stood until 1908
- 1976 – Death of Lars Onsager, Norwegian chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1903)
- 1986 – Death of James H. Wilkinson, English mathematician (b. 1919)
- 2004 – Death of Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1916)
- 2004 – Death of William H. Dobelle, American biomedical engineer, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine nominee (b. 1941)