This document profiles several important scientists from the Scientific Revolution period. It provides brief biographies on Paracelsus, Vesalius, Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Blaise Pascal, William Harvey, Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Margaret Cavendish, Maria Sibylla Merian, Maria Winkelmann, Sir Isaac Newton and others. For each scientist, it highlights their country of origin, area of expertise, major contributions or publications, a famous quote, and an interesting fact. The document serves to introduce some of the pivotal figures and their achievements during the Scientific Revolution.

1. Scientist Profiles
The Scientific Revolution

2. Paracelsus
Name: Paracelsus / Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von
Hohenheim
Active: 1500s
Country of Origin: Switzerland
Area of expertise: Medicine (chemistry, toxicology, psychosomatism,
hermeticism)
Known for: Pioneering the “medical revolution” of the Renaissance, being
credited as the “father of toxicology, Paracelsianism is the early modern
medical movement inspired by the study of his works
Publications: Very lengthy bibliography, but his most integral work was Der
Grossen Wundartznei; “The Great Surgery Book”
Famous quote: “If disease put us to the test, all our splendor, title, ring, and
name will be as much help as a horse’s tail”
Fun fact: In display of his contempt for conventional medicine, Paraculsus
publicly burned editions of the works of Galen and Avicenna. He was prone to
many outbursts of abusive language, abhorred untested theory, and ridiculed
anybody who placed more importance on titles than practice.

3. Vesalius
Active: 1514--1564
Country of Origin: Brussels, then in the country of the Netherlands
Area of Expertise: medicine
Known For: Observations on the human body; established that the blood circulated through the heart as opposed to the
liver, which was the prevailing theory at the time.
Publications: On the Fabric of the Human Body
Famous Quote: “I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.”
Fun Fact: While taking a trip to reach the Holy Lands, Vesalius was marooned on an island, where he died.

4. Francis Bacon
Active: Late 1500’s to early 1600’s
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Area of Expertise: Philosophy, science
Known For: The creation of the scientific method
Publications Partitions of the Sciences, New Method , Natural History, Ladder of the Intellect ,Anticipations of
the 2nd Philosophy, The Second Philosophy or Active Science, and a series of religious and literary works
Famous Quote: “Knowledge is power”
Fun Fact: There is conspiracy theory that Francis Bacon actually faked his own death.

5. Johannes Kepler
Active: Late 1500’s - Early 1600’s
Country of Origin: ( Germany) Holy Roman Empire
Area of Expertise: Mathematics
Known For: Kepler’s laws of planetary motion,
which describe the movement of celestial objects.
Publications:Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and
Harmonies of the World
Famous Quote: I much prefer the sharpest criticism
of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless
approval of the masses
Fun Fact: NASA named a space telescope
after Johannes Kepler, which launched on, March
6, 2009.

6. Blaise Pascal
Active: mid-1600’s
Country of Origin: France
Area of Expertise: Mathematics, geometry, and physical science
Known For: Pascal’s triangle, hydraulic press, and the philosophy of
mathematics
Publications: Pensees, The Mind on Fire, Human Happiness, The Provincial
Letters
Famous Quote: We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the
heart. ~ Blaise Pascal
Fun Fact: Pascal was a child prodigy and his father homeschooled him

7. William HarveyActive: 1600s
Country of Origin: England
Area of Expertise: Medicine
Known For: Identifying heart as the origin of blood circulation; realizing the same blood flows in both
veins and arteries
Publications: On the Motion of the Heart and Blood (1628)
Famous Quote: “I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not
from positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature”
Fun Fact: Harvey was the personal physician to James I of England. In this capacity he examined
women being tried for witchcraft and helped several of them be acquitted.

8. Spinoza
Name: Benedict de Spinoza (Born “Benedito de Espinosa”)
Active: 1632-1677
Country of Origin: Netherlands
Area of Expertise: Philosophy
Known For: The idea that everything has a rational explanation that can be discovered by humans
Publications: Theologico-Political Treatise, Political Treatise, Ethics Demonstrated in the Geometrical Manner
(Ethics)
Famous Quote: “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to
understand is to be free.”
Fun Fact: Spinoza was fluent in 7 different languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and
German.

9. Rene Descartes
Active: Approximately 1600-1650
Country of Origin: France
Area of Expertise: rationalism
Known For: Cartesian dualism, (separation of mind and matter)
modern scientific method.
Publications: Discourse on Method, La Geometria
Famous Quote: “I think, therefore, I am”
Fun Facts: Descartes related human existence to mathematics,
using logic to prove facts.
This is the same man who wrote Descartes’s Rule of Signs in
mathematics.

10. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Active: The late 1600’s and the early 1700’s Country of Origin: Saxony
(Present day Germany) Area of Expertise: Mathematics and philosophy.
Known For: Differential and integral calculus, symbolic logic and
metaphysics
Publications: Discourse on Metaphysics, The Monadology
Famous Quote: “He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet
things”
Fun Fact: Leibniz refined the binary system which is used as the
foundation of most computers

11. Margaret Cavendish
Active: 1623-1673
Country of Origin: Born in Colchester, United Kingdom
Area of Expertise: Scientific debate. Humans and Nature
Known For: Many works concerning the relationship between
theology and science.
Publications: The Blazing World, A True Relation of My Birth,
Breeding, and Life, Natures Pictures Drawn By Fancies Pencil to
the Life, The Life of the Thrice Noble, Hight, and Pussiant Prince
William Cavendishe, Poems and Fancies, Observations upon
Experimental Philosophy, Orations
Famous Quote: “there is little difference between man and beast, but
what ambition and glory makes.”
Fun Fact: Margaret was quite interested in disagreeing with
people, including herself. She revised her works many times
because she had realized she no longer believed what she had
wrote. When she began studying the works of other scientists she
disagreed with them enough to write a new book about her own
opinions.

12. Maria Sibylla Merian
Active: Late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
Country of Origin: Germany
Area of Expertise: Entomology
Known For: Illustrations of nature, especially those in the wilds of Surinam,
South America
Publications: Metamorphis of the Insects of Surinam, The Caterpillars'
Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food, New Book of Flowers, The
Miraculous Transformation and Unusual Flower-Food of Caterpillars
Famous Quote: “Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually
conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which
is conquered, conquers at the same time.”
Fun Fact: Had a slave to help with Surinam research; criticized treatment of
slaves

13. Maria Winkelmann
Active: 1670 - 1720
Country of Origin: Germany
Area of Expertise: astronomy
Known For: she was the the first woman to discover a comet, and
she also wrote about the placement of Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter
in relation to the sun
Publications: Von der Conjunction der Sonne des Saturni und
der Venus (1707) Die Vorbereitung zug grossen Opposition (1711)
Famous Quote: “[A woman can become] as skilled as a man at
observing and Understanding the skies.”
Fun Fact: her father (contrary to what society thought at the time)
thought she shouldreceive an education comparable to those
which boys received at the time

14. Sir Isaac Newton
Active: 1661 (entered Cambridge) to 1727 (death)
Country of Origin: England
Area of Expertise: mathematics, physics, astronomy
Known For: formulating calculus, developing modern physics,
mathematical discoveries/innovations
Publications: Principia, Opticks, Method of Fluxions (a description of
calculus)
Famous Quote: I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to
myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore,
and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a
prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me.
Fun Fact: Once wrote a list of sins previously committed; among
them, “Eating an apple in Thy house”