- Driven by the need to measure fields in the Nile valley every year after the floods, he devised plane geometry which was the basis for many subsequent mathematical developments

- Egyptian mathematican whose thought is the basis for modern geometry in many forms

The “Bard of Avon” whose poetry and plays mark him as one of the greatest literary figures in Western history; his Globe theater burned down, though, and the Puritans suppressed the theater

Louis XIV fired Bernini as his architect because his designs were too wild, so the place of this painter was assured; his great canvases are the best examples of French classicism in a Baroque age

This Englishman made a pitch for induction in criticizing the wisdom of the ancients; scientific method needed updating, he said, but he stuck with quality rather than quantity as the basis for inductive insight

French tragedian who updated the Greek models to give meaning to French classicism in the theater; Moliere is often associated with him as a model of comedy and satire during the same time

Devised a learned and complex astronomical theory in the second century A.D.; the system had good predictive power and was adequate until people sought more precise explanations

Paracelsus

Made the connection between disease and chemical imbalances of one sort or another that could be remedied by taking medicines which, after all, are chemicals; a cantankerous coot, though

Leibniz

Philosopher who devised an infinitesimal calculus similar to Newton’s almost simultaneously but independently; the fact lends weight to an argument about a European “spirit of the times”

Rubens

While Rembrandt was excelling in chiaroscuro not far away, this Baroque master was producing exuberant (and gigantic) paintings filled with color, light and movement, largely on commission

Galen

Hellenistic Greek who dissected bodies and wrote up the results; later a quarrel ensued whether his “knife” or Aristotle’s syllogisms were more convincing; he theorized about the four humors

Galileo

Did far more than invent mathematical language to deal with the problems of motion; he also discovered universal physical laws so convincing that people turned from religion to science for ultimate truth; brought before the Roman Inquisition and found guilty of teaching the condemned Copernican system; placed under house arrest

Harvey

Discovered the circulation of blood and the fact that the system is ultimately a unity rather than two separate systems as the ancients had said; but he could not prove it until capillaries were seen

Greenwich

Location of an observatory capable of making exact observations about the timing of the heavenly bodies; later chosen as the arbitrary site for the earth’s prime meridian of longitude

Spinoza

Dutch lens grinder who developed a microscope and was the first to see one-celled animals; he was one of many tinkerers and amateurs who moved science forward

Descartes

Used the skeptics’ own methods against them in an effort to arrive at some indisputable foundation for philosophy; he found it in the famous “Cogito” and deduced heaven and earth; he stressed a split between mind and body

Aristotle

Powerful ancient philosopher whose observations and deductive arguments so impressed people that they were held as the truth for centuries until Galileo found clear sensory evidence to the contrary

Palestrina

Master of polyphony in the late sixteenth century in masses composed for papal patrons; he was followed by composers like Monteverdi who began to do musical dramas called opera

Copernicus

Attempted to simplify the mathematics of celestial orbits by making the sun and not the earth the center of the universe; but he kept orbits of uniform circular motion as the ancients had

Newton

Associated with apples, he accomplished many feats at the dawn of the age of science, observing and quantifying many phenomena such as the activity of balls on inclined planes relying on quantification as his basis; he is the only scientist to be buried in Westminster Abbey

Margaret Cavendish

One of the few women to be active in the sciences, she wrote on new scientific methods and results but rejected the idea that science could solve all problems

Caravaggio

Mannerist painter who developed chiaroscuro and influenced a generation of Baroque painters, he painted Judith Beheading Holofernes and The Beheading of John the Baptist

da Vinci

Renaissance polymath whose anatomical studies were so perfect that we sent one of his figures into space a few years back to suggest to aliens what we look like, he also invented a flying machine, however, he is more famous for his Last Supper

Brahe

This Danish astronomer made accurate observations that could be used by his successors to establish precise orbits of the planets; proposed a compromise between geo- and heliocentric theory; he was Kepler’s mentor

Pascal

Responding to Cartesian dualism of mind and body this pantheistic philosopher concluded that all material things are a part of God; he took what he called a “geometric” approach to morality

Kepler

After concluding that the orbits of planets are elliptical and motion variable he went on to discover two more laws, one saying that planets traverse equal areas of their orbits in equal times; Brahe was his mentor