Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer. He received a master's degree in 1532 from the University of Louvain (Belgium), where he settled. By 24 he was a skilled engraver, calligrapher, and scientific-instrument maker. He and his colleagues...

Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus : Autograph paper codex (1478-1518 c.), 1119 ff., 65x44cm. This is the largest collection of Leonardo's manuscript sheets, formed at the end of the sixteenth century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who dis...

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance- and Reformation-era mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, likely independently of Aristarchus of S...

Johannes Müller von Königsberg, today best known by the Latin epithet Regiomontanus, was a German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, translator, instrument maker and Catholic bishop. He was born in the Franconian village of Unfinden,...

Nicholas of Kues, also referred to as Nicolaus Cusanus and Nicholas of Cusa, was a cardinal of the Catholic Church from Germany (Holy Roman Empire), a philosopher, jurist, mathematician, and an astronomer. He is widely considered one of the...

Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer. Toscanelli is noted for his observations of comets and the painstaking calculation of their orbits. Among these was the comet of 1456; only named Halley'...

William of Ockham was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey.[1] He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and...

Roger Bacon was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods. He is sometimes credited (mainly since the nineteenth century) as one of the earliest European ad...

Leonardo Pisano Bigollo or simply Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician, considered by some "the most talented western mathematician of the Middle Ages." Fibonacci is best known to the modern world for the spreading of the Hindu-Arabic nu...

Moses Maimonides is regarded by many as the greatest Jewish philosopher ever. As a doctor, rabbi, religious scholar, mathematician, astronomer, and commentator on the art of medicine, his influence has spanned centuries and cultures. He was...

Averroës is the Latinized form of Ibn Rushd, a mediæval Andalusian Muslim polymath. He wrote on logic, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, theology, the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, political and Andalusian classical...

Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. He was born in Nishabur, in northeastern Iran, and spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the Firs...

Avicenna is the Latinate form of Ibn-Sina. He was a Persian polymath regarded both in Europe and the Middle East as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. He is known to have written around 450 works acr...

Abu Rayhan Biruni was a Persian mathematician, physicist, scholar, encyclopedist, philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, traveller, historian, pharmacist, and teacher, who contributed greatly to the fields of mathematics, philosophy, medicine...

Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) was a Muslim scientist, polymath, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, described in various sources as either Persian or Arab. He made significant contributions to the principles of optics, as well as to physi...