Napier's bones are an abacus invented by John Napier for calculation of products and quotients of numbers. Also called Rabdologia. Napier published his invention of the rods in a work printed in Edinburgh at the end of 1617 also entitle...

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences...

The Honourable Robert Boyle was an Irish natural philosopher, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. He was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of effect...

Christiaan Huygens was a prominent Dutch mathematician and scientist. He is known particularly as an astronomer, physicist, probabilist and horologist. Huygens was a leading scientist of his time. His work included early telescopic studi...

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch tradesman and scientist. He is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and considered to be the first microbiologist. He is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope and...

Robert Hooke, natural philosopher, inventor, architect, chemist, mathematician, physicist, engineer. Robert Hooke is one of the most neglected natural philosophers of all time. The inventor of, amongst other things, the iris diaphragm in ca...

Swammerdam was a seventeenth century Dutch microscopist and naturalist who is most famous for his microscopic observations and descriptions of insect development that were published posthumously as The Bible of Nature, but is more often ref...

Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific...

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz was a German mathematician and philosopher. He occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy. Leibniz developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and Leibniz's...

Denis Papin was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine, and of the pressure cooker. In 1673, while working with Christiaan Huygens...

Jacob Bernoulli was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus and had sided with Leibniz during the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy. He is known for his numerous c...

Edmond Halley, Astronomer, remembered because his name is attached to a comet. Leaving Queen's College, Oxford, without a degree in 1676, he went to St Helena to map the southern stars. After a famous meeting with Wren and Hooke, he visited...

The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles...

Johann Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is known for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and educated Leonhard Euler in his youth. Throughout Johann Ber...

Dutch physician, anatomist, botanist, chemist and humanist. One of the most influential clinicians and teachers of the 18th century, Boerhaave spent almost his entire life in Leiden, which became a leading medical centre of Europe. Like Tho...