Thomas Willis was an English doctor who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry. He was a founding member of the Royal Society. He was a pioneer in research into the anatomy of the brain, nervous system...

Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alter...

Charles X Gustav was King of Sweden from 1654 until his death. He was the son of John Casimir, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken-Kleeburg and Catherine of Sweden. After his father's death he also succeeded him as Pfalzgraf. He was married to He...

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière, was a French theatre writer, director, stage manager, actor, and all-around man of theatre, one of the masters of comic satire. The son of an interior decorator, Jean Baptiste Poquelin los...

Sir Robert Holmes was an English Admiral of the Restoration Navy. He took part in the second and third Anglo-Dutch wars, both of which he is, by some, credited with having started. He was made governor of the Isle of Wight, where he is buri...

Coenraad van Beuningen was the Dutch Republic's most experienced diplomat, burgemeester of Amsterdam in 1669, 1672, 1680, 1681, 1683 and 1684, and from 1681 a VOC (Dutch East India Company) director. He probably was bi-polar, becoming unsta...

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...

Cornelis de Witt was the older brother of Johan (Jan), and also a close relative to the great Dutch regents Cornelis and his brother Andries de Graeff and their cousin Andries Bicker. He associated himself closely with his greater brother,...

Sir George Downing, 1st Baronet was an Anglo-Irish soldier, statesman, and diplomat. Downing Street in London is named after him. As Treasury Secretary he is credited with instituting major reforms in public finance. His influence was subst...

George Fox was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. The son of a Leicestershire weaver, Fox lived in a time of great social upheaval and war. He rebelled agains...

Johan de Witt or Jan de Witt, heer van Zuid- en Noord-Linschoten, Snelrewaard, Hekendorp and IJsselveere, was a key figure in Dutch politics in the mid-17th century, when its flourishing sea trade in a period of globalization made the Unite...

Dutch genre painter Jan Steen was born in Leiden into the family of a brewer. He enrolled briefly at the university in 1646, but very soon turned to painting. Steen probably received his training in Utrecht from Nicolaes Knüpfer, and worked...

Giovanni Domenico Cassini was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and engineer. Cassini was born in Perinaldo, near Imperia, at that time in the County of Nice, part of the Duchy of Savoy. Cassini is known for his work in the f...

William II was sovereign Prince of Orange and stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands from 14 March 1647 until his death three years later. His only child, also named William, would go on to reign as William III of England an...

Shivaji Bhonsle was an Indian warrior king and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan, Shivaji, in 1674, carved out an enclave from the declining Adilshahi sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of an independent Maratha kingdom with Ra...