Scientists through history
The atlas holds 62 people and 1,917 moments here, from 563 BC to 2023. The most recorded lives are Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Montesquieu and Thomas Hobbes. Across the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment.
Notable people
Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
from 780 to 825
3 moments here
Persian mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and author active under the Abbasid caliphs. Biographical evidence is exceptionally sparse and his…
Montesquieu
from 1689 to 1755
29 moments here
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, was a French jurist, historian, and political philosopher.…
Thomas Hobbes
from 1588 to 1679
11 moments here
English philosopher and political theorist, best known for Leviathan (1651). Hobbes’s documented movements include study at Oxford, European travel…
Seneca the Younger
from 5 to 65
9 moments here
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, commonly called Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, writer, and statesman.…
Giordano Bruno
from 1548 to 1600
31 moments here
Italian Renaissance philosopher, Dominican friar, writer, and cosmological theorist. Born at Nola, Bruno studied and lived in Italy, Switzerland,…
Heraclitus
in 500 BC
2 moments here
Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher associated with Ephesus in Ionia, active around 500 BC.…
Sima Qian
from 145 BC to 110 BC
9 moments here
Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty and author of the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian).…
Ptolemy
from 127 to 141
2 moments here
Claudius Ptolemy was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and music theorist.…
Averroes
from 1126 to 1182
6 moments here
Averroes, also known as Ibn Rushd, was an Andalusian jurist, physician, philosopher, and commentator on Aristotle.…
Wangarĩ Maathai
from 1940 to 2011
28 moments here
Kenyan environmentalist, democracy activist, academic, founder of the Green Belt Movement, parliamentarian, and the first African woman awarded the…
Hypatia
from 370 to 415
5 moments here
Hypatia was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, and teacher. Her birth is disputed, with estimates ranging from about 350 to…
Al-Biruni
from 973 to 1048
9 moments here
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni was a Khwarazmian polymath whose documented movements connect Kath and Khwarazm, Bukhara, Gurgan, Gurganj,…
Li Keqiang
from 1955 to 2023
41 moments here
Chinese politician and economist who rose from rural labour in Anhui through the Communist Youth League, led Henan and Liaoning, served as vice…
Raisa Gorbacheva
from 1932 to 1999
26 moments here
Soviet and Russian activist, philanthropist, lecturer, and public figure; wife of Mikhail Gorbachev.…