Scientific Revolution

Nicolaus Copernicus

Feb 19, 1473

(1473-1543)
He was the first astronomer to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe.
Copernicus' epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), published just before his death in 1543, is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the scientific revolution.

Francis Bacon

Jan 22, 1561

(1561-1626)
Bacon did not propose an actual philosophy, but rather a method of developing philosophy. argued that although philosophy at the time used the deductive syllogism to interpret nature, the philosopher should instead proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to law.
The Novum Organum is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon published in 1620.

Galileo Galilei

Feb 15, 1564

(1564-1642)
Called "the father of moden science," Galileo, a physicist, astronomer, and mathematician, was one of the key figure in the scientific revolutions. He was a trong believer in heliocentrism.
The Starry Messenger, a treatise published by Galileo, was the first scientific treatise based on observations made through a telescope, of which Galileo helped to invent.

Johannes Kepler

Dec 27, 1571

(1571-1630)
He was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. He helped to legitimize the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei. Finding that an elliptical orbit fit the Mars data, he immediately concluded that all planets move in ellipses, with the sun at one focus.

Descartes

Mar 31, 1596

(1596-1650)
He was a French philosopher whose work, La géométrie, includes his application of algebra to geometry from which we now have Cartesian geometry.
Descartes published his major philosophical work, "A Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy" in 1641.
In Descartes' view, the universe was created by God on whose power everything depends.

Isaac Newton

Dec 25, 1642

Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727), mathematician and physicist, one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time.
With equal, if not greater, energy and originality he also plunged into chemistry, the early history of Western civilization, and theology; among his special studies was an investigation of the form and dimensions, as described in the Bible, of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.
Newton published an edition of Geographia generalis by the German geographer Varenius in 1672.