Imhotep was an Egyptian polymath who served under the Third Dynasty king Djoser as chancellor to the pharaoh and high priest of the sun god Ra (or Re) at Heliopolis. He is considered by some to be the earliest known architect and engineer a...

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet and is often identified as the first economist. His date is uncertain but leading scholars, favor the the eighth century BC for when Hesiod lived. Since at least Herodotus's time, Hesiod and Homer have generally...

Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia (in modern-day Turkey). He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and became the second mast...

Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in the Persian Empire (modern-day Urla, Turkey) Anaxagoras was the first to bring philosophy to Athens. According to Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, in later life he was ch...

Aristarchus of Samos was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it. He was influenced by Phi...

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. He invented the discipline of geography, including the...

Posidonius of Apameia or of Rhodes was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age. None of his vast body of work can be...

Zhang Heng was a Chinese astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar from Nanyang, Henan. He lived during the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25–220) of China. He was educated in the...

Claudius Ptolemy was a Greco-Egyptian writer of Alexandria, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt...

Aryabhata is the first of the great astronomers of the classical age of India. He was born in 476 AD in Ashmaka but later lived in Kusumapura, which his commentator Bhaskara I (629 AD) identifies with Patilputra (modern Patna). Aryabhata...

Brahmagupta was a great Indian mathematician and astronomer who wrote many important works on mathematics and astronomy. His best known work is the Brahmasphutasiddhanta (Correctly Established Doctrine of Brahma), written in 628 in Bhinmal...

Bede, also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede, was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow (see Wea...

Al-Khwarizmi was a Persian scholar who produced works in mathematics, astronomy, and geography. Around 820 AD he was appointed as the astronomer and head of the library of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Al-Khwarizmi's popularizing treat...

Al-Farabi was a renowned scientist and philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age. He was also a cosmologist, logician, and musician. Through his commentaries and treatises, Al-Farabi became well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals as "...

Pope Sylvester II, born Gerbert d'Aurillac, was a prolific scholar, teacher, and Pope. He endorsed and promoted study of Arab/Greco-Roman arithmetic, mathematics, and astronomy, reintroducing to Europe the abacus and armillary sphere, which...