Italy: the essential lives

Republican theory and oratory that still frame constitutional argument.

Emperor whose private Meditations founded modern Stoic self-help.

Wrote Consolation of Philosophy awaiting execution; medieval Europe's bridge to antiquity.

Fused Aristotle with Christianity; natural-law theory still shapes law and ethics.

Made a dialect into a nation's language and mapped the moral universe.

Proved that art and science are one act of looking.

The Prince separated political analysis from moral instruction.

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

Built the first battery; the volt is his.

The silver stain that made neurons visible.

Made radio a transatlantic reality.

Discovered nerve growth factor in a bedroom lab under fascist persecution.

Chemist whose Auschwitz testimony is the standard of moral witness.

The Foundations of Chinese Medicine became the standard Western textbook of the field.

The Entrepreneurial State reframed public investment as the source of major innovation.