Browse the index

Filter by category and discipline, then by continent, country and century of birth. Countries not yet represented can be drafted at the research desk.

20 figures

Leonardo da Vinci

1452 – 1519

Proved that art and science are one act of looking.

Italy·Engineering · Biology · Astronomy · LiteratureFull profile

Niccolò Machiavelli

1469 – 1527

The Prince separated political analysis from moral instruction.

Italy·Politics · Philosophy

Copernicus

1473 – 1543

Moved the Earth from the centre of the universe.

Poland·Astronomy · Mathematics

Andreas Vesalius

1514 – 1564

Dissected humans himself and corrected Galen; founded modern anatomy.

Belgium·Medicine · Biology

Miguel de Cervantes

1547 – 1616

Don Quixote, the first modern novel and the most translated after the Bible.

Spain·Literature

William Shakespeare

1564 – 1616

Built the language most of the planet now negotiates in.

United Kingdom·LiteratureFull profile

Galileo Galilei

1564 – 1642

Pointed a telescope upward and broke the authority of the ancients.

Italy·Astronomy · Physics · MathematicsFull profile

Johannes Kepler

1571 – 1630

Three laws of planetary motion; every satellite orbit obeys them.

Germany·Astronomy · Mathematics

Jan Baptist van Helmont

1580 – 1644

Coined 'gas' and ran the first quantitative plant-growth experiment.

Belgium·Chemistry · Biology

Thomas Hobbes

1588 – 1679

Leviathan founded the modern theory of sovereignty and the social contract.

United Kingdom·Politics · Philosophy

René Descartes

1596 – 1650

Cogito ergo sum and coordinate geometry.

France·Philosophy · Mathematics

Blaise Pascal

1623 – 1662

Probability theory, hydrostatics, and a mechanical calculator at nineteen.

France·Mathematics · Physics · Philosophy

Christiaan Huygens

1629 – 1695

Wave theory of light, the pendulum clock, Saturn's rings.

Netherlands·Physics · Astronomy

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

1632 – 1723

Ground lenses in a draper's shop and discovered the microbial world.

Netherlands·Biology

John Locke

1632 – 1704

Consent, property and toleration — the template for liberal constitutions.

United Kingdom·Politics · Philosophy

Baruch Spinoza

1632 – 1677

Ethics identified God with Nature and grounded secular democratic thought.

Netherlands·Philosophy

Isaac Newton

1643 – 1727

Showed that one law governs the apple and the Moon alike.

United Kingdom·Physics · Mathematics · AstronomyFull profile

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

1646 – 1716

Calculus notation we still use, and binary arithmetic.

Germany·Mathematics · Philosophy · Computing

Montesquieu

1689 – 1755

Separation of powers, copied into nearly every written constitution since.

France·Politics · Law

Voltaire

1694 – 1778

Weaponised satire for tolerance and free expression.

France·Literature · Philosophy