Cassidy Graybill

Nicolaus Copernicus

1543

he made Copernicus's theory. Putting the sun in the center of all the planets.

Francis Bacon

1603

Francis Bacon indirectly contributed to plate tectonic theory and solid Earth geophysics but was influential to all in the scientific community. Francis Bacon created the Scientific Method, also known as the Bacon Method.

Galileo Galilei

1610

Galileo was a natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. He also made revolutionary telescopic discoveries, including the four largest moons of Jupiter.

Rene Descartes

1641

Rene Descartes had a very important role to play in the Scientific Revolution. Through his specialty in mathematics, he was able to transform geometrical problems into algebra. Further, he established the x and y-axis in his algebraic drawings. The modern notation for exponents was also a Rene Descartes innovation.

Rene Descartes

1641

Through his specialty in mathematics, he was able to transform geometrical problems into algebra. Further, he established the x and y-axis in his algebraic drawings.

Isaac Newton

1666

Isaac Newton is important for his contributions to the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, specifically his Law of Universal Gravitation, and Three Laws of Motion. and the invention of the reflecting telescope.

John Locke

1679

Locke based his Two Treatises around the idea of a social contract in which individuals consent to surrendering some of their rights in exchange for protection and order. American Revolutionaries adopted this notion and others, particularly in the Declaration of Independence.

Montesquieu

1748

Montesquieu's discussion of the separation of powers and checks and balances profoundly influenced the American Founders and the design of the U.S. Constitution. It was not unusual for eighteenth-century Americans to speak of Montesquieu as an “oracle” of political wisdom whose work is always consulted.

Denis Diderot

1751

The epochal project, which Diderot jointly pursued with Jean le Rond D'Alembert, to “change the common way of thinking” through a comprehensive Encyclopedia, or Reasoned Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences, and Trades provided the emergent philosophe movement with the cause around which they would coalesce.

Voltaire

1763

With his condemnation of torture, war, religious persecution, and absolute monarchy, Voltaire paved the way for the ideas that would fuel the French Revolution in 1789 and inspired great American intellects like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Adam Smith

1776

in March 1776, Smith published An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This massive work of almost 1,000 pages was based on his exhaustive research and personal observations. Smith attacked government intervention in the economy and provided a blueprint for free markets and free trade.