The 15th–17th century

Proved that art and science are one act of looking.

The Prince separated political analysis from moral instruction.

Moved the Earth from the centre of the universe.

Built over 300 structures including the Selimiye Mosque; Ottoman master architect.

Dissected humans himself and corrected Galen; founded modern anatomy.

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

Timbuktu's greatest scholar; wrote over 40 works and argued against enslavement of Muslims.

Built the language most of the planet now negotiates in.

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

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

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

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

Cogito ergo sum and coordinate geometry.

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

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

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

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

Ethics identified God with Nature and grounded secular democratic thought.

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

Perfected haiku and the travel journal in The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Calculus notation we still use, and binary arithmetic.

The nun who argued for women's right to learn — and was silenced for it.

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

Weaponised satire for tolerance and free expression.