The year 1606 in science and technology involved some significant events.

• The cryptographic text Steganographia, written by Johannes Trithemius c.1499/1500, is published in Frankfurt.

• February 26
  • Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon makes the first confirmed sighting of Australia by a European.
  • Pedro Fernandes de Queirós discovers the Pitcairn Islands.
• March – The Dutch ship Duyfken, under Captain Willem Janszoon, explores the western coast of Cape York Peninsula.^[1]
• May – Pedro Fernandes de Queirós discovers the islands of Vanuatu; believing them to be Australia, he names them La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo.^[2]
• October – Luís Vaz de Torres is the first European to sail through the Torres Strait.

• Giovanni Antonio Magini devises trigonometric tables of high accuracy.

• Approx. date – Galileo invents a thermometer based on the expansion of gas.^[3]

• The first recorded instance of a bayonet published in the Chinese military treatise Binglu [zh].

• January 4 (bapt.) – Edmund Castell, English orientalist (died 1685)

• September 28 – Nicolaus Taurellus, German philosopher and scientist (born 1547)
• November 13 – Girolamo Mercuriale, Italian physician and historian (born 1530)
• Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, Dutch nautical chart maker (born 1533/4)