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Filter by category and discipline, then by continent, country and century of birth. Countries not yet represented can be drafted at the research desk.
Category
Disciplines in Literature & Letters
Novelists, poets, philosophers, theologians, New Thought authors, historians and the students of language itself.
Era
6 figures
Hildegard of Bingen
1098 – 1179Abbess, composer, and author of the first known European medical texts by a woman.
Germany·Medicine · Literature
Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
1126 – 1198His Aristotle commentaries restarted European philosophy.
Spain·Philosophy · Medicine
Maimonides
1138 – 1204Guide for the Perplexed reconciled reason and revelation for Judaism.
Spain·Philosophy · Medicine
Thomas Aquinas
1225 – 1274Fused Aristotle with Christianity; natural-law theory still shapes law and ethics.
Italy·Philosophy
Dante Alighieri
1265 – 1321Made a dialect into a nation's language and mapped the moral universe.
Italy·Literature · PhilosophyFull profile
Geoffrey Chaucer
1343 – 1400Made English a literary language with The Canterbury Tales.
United Kingdom·Literature