This is the present age. I date this from around 1600, in which year Kepler went to work for Tycho Brahe, Gilbert, Bacon and Galileo began philosophising about scientific method. And the church executed Bruno for heresies arising from his musings on the consequences of the Copernican system. This is the Scientific Age. So much has happened in these five centuries that it is impossible to give more than an outline here. Greater detail will be found in the pages (still being developed) on individual sciences.
In this section each biographical note is placed according to the birth-date, to the nearest 25-year interval. Thus 1700 covers all birth dates from 1688 to 1712, and 1725 covers 1713 to 1737, that is plus or minus 12 years.
William Shakespeare & (1564 - 1616), dramatist and poet, Complete Works.
Pieter Breughel the Younger (c.1564 - 1638), painter.
Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), Sidereus Nuncius 'Starry Messenger' 1610, reported the first telescopic discoveries, including moons of Jupiter, Two World Systems 1632, Two New Sciences 1640.
Monteverdi (1567 - 1643) composer.
Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) painter.
Johannes Kepler & & & & & & (1571 - 1630), Mysterium Cosmographicum 1596, Astronomia Pars Optica 1604, De Stella Nova 1606, Astronomia Nova gave the first two laws of planetary motion 1609, Dioptrice 1611, Nova Stereometria Dolorium 1615 uses primitive calculus to estimate volumes of revolution of wine barrels, Harmonice Mundi includes work on polyhedra, and the third law of planetary motion relating size and period of orbits 1619, Epitome Astronomiae 1621 influential textbook, Rudolphine Tables accurate astronomical data 1627.
William Oughtred (1574 - 1660), Clavis Mathematicae 1631, slide rule.
Robert Burton (1577 - 1640) The Anatomy of Melancholy 1621, literary psychology.
Peter Paul Rubens & & (1577 - 1640), painter.
William Harvey & & & & & (1578 - 1657), On the Motion of the Heart, On Generation.
Jan Baptista van Helmont & & (1579-1644) chemistry.
Claude Gaspar Bachet Sieur de Meziriac (1581 - 1638), Problèmes plaisans et delectables 1612.
James Ussher & & & (1581 - 1656), biblical scholar and chronogist dated creation at ¬4004.
Thomas Ady (fl.1660), A Candle in the Dark, and other Humanists Survey of various works of the 1660s against witchcraft and religion.
Thomas Hobbes & & & & & (1588 - 1679) Leviathan & 1651, political philosophy.
Rene Descartes & & & & & (1596 - 1650), Discourse on Method & &.
Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598 - 1647), Geometria indivisibilibus 1635.
Pierre de Fermat (1601 - 1665), number theorist.
Rembrandt van Rijn & (1606 - 1669), painter, The Night Watch 1642, Self-portraits.
John Wallis (1616 - 1703), Arithmetica Infinitorum 1656.
Blaise Pascal & & & (1623 - 1662), mathematician and theologian Pensees.
Giovanni Cassini & (1625 - 1712), astronomer.
Johann J. Becher (1625-1682), mistaken 'fatty earth' (phlogiston) theory.
Francesco Redi (1626 - 1697), showed maggots hatch from egg-laying flies 1668.
Robert Boyle & & & & & & & (1627 - 1691), The Sceptical Chymist 1661.
Christian Huygens & & (1629 - 1695), Horologium Oscillatorium 1673, Treatise on Light 1690.
John Dryden (1631 - 1700), Absalom amd Achitophel political satire.
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632 - 1723) microscopist.
Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703), microscopist and architect.
John Locke & & & & & (1632 - 1704), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, philosopher of empiricism and democracy.
Niels Stensen aka Nicolaus Steno (1638 - 1686), Prodromus 1669, recognised that fossil shells in rock strata must have been laid down on the seabed, and that lower levels without fossils must predate the existence of life.
Isaac Newton & & & & & & & (1642 - 1727), Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy & 1687.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz & & & (1646 - 1716) philosopher and mathematician, calculus.
Jacob Bernoulli (1654 - 1705) mathematician.
Edmond Halley (1656 - 1742), Halley's comet 1682.
Henry Purcell & & & & (1659 - 1695), composer Dido and Aeneas.
Georg Ernst Stahl & (1660-1743), mistaken phlogiston theory.
R. J. Camerarius (1665 - 1721) studied plant pollination 1694.
Thomas Fairchild, (1667 - 1729), plant hybridisation 1720.
Johann Bernoulli (1667 - 1748) mathematician, brother of Jacob and father of Daniel.
Brook Taylor & (1685 - 1731), Methodus Incrementorum 1715, Taylor's series for f(x + h).
Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744), poet Essay on Man.
Francois-Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire & & (1694 - 1778) writer and philosopher.
Colin Maclaurin (1698 - 1746), Treatise of Fluxions 1742, Maclaurin's series.
Daniel Bernoulli (1700 - 1782) mathematician, hydrodynamics.
Carl von Linné aka Carolus Linnaeus (1707 - 1778), Systema Natura 1735, introduced the two-part name system of genus and species for any plant or animal.
Leonhard Euler & & (1707 - 1783) mathematician.
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon & (1707 -1788), Natural History 1749, 1781.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau & & H H (1712 - 1778) writer and philosopher.
James Hutton & & & & (1726 - 1797), Theory of the Earth 1785, maintained there were cycles of geological activity, known for the saying 'No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end'.
James Cook & & & (1728 - 1779), explorer.
John Hunter (1728 - 1793), surgeon.
Joseph Black & (1728-1799), carbon dioxide.
Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729 - 1799), microscopist 1765.
Henry Cavendish & & (1731-1810), hydrogen.
Joseph Priestley & & (1733-1804), oxygen.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736 - 1813), mathematician.
Luigi Galvani & & (1737 - 1798), animal electricity.
William Herschel (1738 - 1822), astronomer, discovery of a new planet in the solar system, which he called Georgium Sidum, later named Uranus 1781.
Joseph Marie Degerando (1739 - 1785), The Observation of Savage Peoples, anthropology.
Donatien de Sade aka Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814).
William Smellie (1740 - 1795), The Philosophy of Natural History 1791.
Joseph Banks (1743 - 1820), botanist and scientiifc administrator.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck & & & & & (1744 -1829), Philosophie Zoologique 1809, a theory of evolution by acquired characteristics.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele & & & (1742-1786)
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier & & & & (1743-1794), correct theory of combustion.
Alessandro Volta & & (1745 - 1827), electric 'pile' battery.
Francesco Goya (1746 - 1828), painter The Third of May, The Sleep of Reason.
Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832), utilitarianism Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 1789, Handbook of Political Fallacies 1824.
Pierre-Simon Laplace & & & (1749 - 1827), Mecanique Celeste.
C. K. Sprengel & & & (1750 - 1816), plant pollination by insects.
Samuel Stanhope Smith & (1751 - 1819), On Variety in the Human Species 1787, anthropology.
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752 - 1840), On the Natural Variety of Mankind, anthropology.
James Hall 1761 - 1832, geology of volcanic rocks.
Thomas Robert Malthus & & & & & & (1766 - 1834), Essay on the Principle of Population & & & & 1798.
John Dalton & & & (1766-1844), A New System of Chemical Philosophy 1808, atomic theory.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821) soldier and statesman.
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769 - 1852) soldier and statesman.
Alexander von Humboldt & & & & & & & (1769 - 1859) explorer and naturalist.
William Smith & & (1769 - 1839), first Geological Map of England and Wales 1815.
Georges Cuvier & (1769 - 1832), The Animal Kingdon 1827-35, comparative anatomy.
Alexandre Brongniart (1770 - 1847) geologist.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge & (1772 - 1834), poet Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel.
Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire (1772 - 1844), ideas on evolution.
Charles Caldwell (1772 - 1853), physician, Original Unity of Human Race 1852.
Aimé Bonpland & & & (1773 - 1852) explorer and naturalist (Humboldt expedition 1799).
Francis Beaufort (1774 - 1857), hydrographer of the British Admiralty 1829-54, meteorologist, originated the Beaufort wind scale.
George Birkbeck & & (1776 - 1841), Founder of mechanics institutes.
Humphry Davy & & & & & (1778 - 1829), electro-chemistry.
John Collins Warren (1778 - 1856), Nervous Systems in Man and Animals 1822.
Jons Jacob Berzelius & & & & (1779-1848), chemical notation.
William Buckland & & & A (1784 - 1856) geologist and fossil hunter.
Adam Sedgwick & & (1785 - 1873) geologist.
Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826), spectrum lines.
Gideon Mantell & & & (1790 - 1852), fossil hunter.
John Bachman (1790 - 1874), Unity of the Human Race 1850.
Michael Faraday & & & (1791 - 1867), Experimental Researches in Electricity & 1830-55, Liquefaction of Gases 1823-45.
Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871), inventor of a difference engine, precursor of programmable computers.
Roderick Murchison (1792 - 1871), geologist.
John F. W. Herschel & & & & (1792 - 1871), Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy 1831, Outlines of Astronomy 1849, coined the term "photography".
William Whewell & & (1794 - 1866), coined the term "scientist" 1833, History of the Inductive Sciences 1837, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 1840, Indication of the Creator 1846.
Charles Lyell & & & & (1797 - 1875), Principles of Geology (3 vols 1830-1833), Antiquity of Man 1873.
August Comte & & & & (1798 - 1857), coined the term "sociology".
Mary Anning & & & & & & (1799 - 1847), fossil hunter.
Friedrich Wohler & (1800 - 1882), synthesis of urea, an "organic" compound.
George Airy (1801 - 1892), astronomer royal 1835-81.
Robert Chambers & & & (1802 - 1871), Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation 1844.
Justus Freiherr von Liebig & (1803 - 1873), Animal Chemistry 1842, Organic Chemistry 1843, Agricultural Chemistry 1855.
Josiah C. Nott (1804 - 1873), Caucasian and Negro Races 1850.
Richard Owen & & & (1804 - 1892) - named 'Dinosaurs', founded Natural History Museum, Review of 'Origin of Species' 1860.
Alexis de Tocqueville & & (1805 - 1859), Democracy in America 1835-40.
Robert Fitzroy (1805 - 1865), navigator, hydrographer, meteorologist.
John Stuart Mill & & & (1806 - 1873), System of Logic 1843, On Liberty 1859, Utilitarianism 1861, The Subjection of Women 1869.
Louis Agassiz & & & & & (1807 - 1873), Natural History of USA 1857-62, Darwinism 1869.
Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882), Voyage of the Beagle 1845, Origin of Species 1859.
Mary Gove Nicholls & (1810 - 1884), Water Cure 1874.
Robert Bunsen & (1811 - 1899), spectrum analysis.
Claude Bernard & & (1813 - 1878), scientific method in medicine, Experimental Medicine 1865.
J. L. Cabell & (1813 - 1889), Common Origin of Mankind 1858.
George Boole (1815 - 1864), mathematical logic.
Joseph Dalton Hooker botanist.
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), poet, Leaves of Grass 1865.
John Tyndall & & & & (1820 - 1893), physics of atmosphere.
Johann Joseph Loschmidt & & (1821 - 1895), On the Size of the Air Molecules, 1865.
Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895).
Franis Galton (1822 - 1911), biometrics, eugenics (1883).
Alfred Russel Wallace & & & & & & & & (1823 - 1913), collector, co-discoverer of "natural selection" On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type (1858), Correspondence with Darwin, The Malay Archipelago (1869), On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism 1874, The Wonderful Century 1900.
Gustav Kirchhoff &(1824 - 1887), electric circuits, spectrum analysis.
Paul Broca & & (1824 - 1880), Faculty of Language 1861, Hybridity in Genus Homo 1864.
Henry Walter Bates (1825 - 1892), naturalist and explorer, Naturalist on the River Amazon (1863).
T. H. Huxley & & & & & & (1825 - 1895) biologist, educator and organiser of science.
John Ferguson McLennan (1827 - 1881), ethnologist, Primitive Marriage 1865.
Joseph Lister (1827 - 1912), antiseptic surgery.
Friedrich August Kekule & (1829 - 1896), elucidated the structure of benzene (C6H6) as a ring 1865 of carbon atoms.
Julius Lothar Meyer & & & (1830 - 1895), atomic volume.
Eduard Suess & (1831 - 1914) first ideas of prehistoric super-continent.
James Clerk Maxwell & (1831 - 1879), Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism &, & 1873, Matter and Motion 1894.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898), Alice's Adventures 1865, 1872, Hunting of the Snark.
Dmitri Mendeleev & & & & (1834-1907), periodic table & &, 1869.
Wilhelm Kuhne (1837 - 1900), physiology of muscle and nerve, chemistry of digestion, defines "enzyme" (1877), trypsin.
William Henry Perkin & & (1838 - 1907), synthesised mauveine (1856), the first aniline purple dye, from coal-tar extracts. He set up a business, which was the beginning of the pharmaceutical industry.
John Addington Symonds (1840 - 1893), poet, historian, Studies of the Greek Poets 1873.
William James & (1842 - 1910), Principles of Psychology 1890, Varieties of Religious Experience 1902.
Peter Kropotkin & & & & & (1842 - 1921), Anarchist, Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution 1902.
Nietsche (1844 - 1900) active 1872 - 89.
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844 - 1906), statistical mechanics, entropy.
Edward Carpenter (1844 - 1929), poet, socialist, homosexual activist The Intermediate Sex 1908.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894), author, Treasure Island (1883), Jekyll and Hyde (1886).
Charles Doolittle Walcott & & & (1850 - 1927), discovered the Burgess Shale Cambrian fossils 1909.
George Fitzgerald (1851 - 1901), Fitzgerald contraction.
Jacobus Van't Hoff (1852 - ), stereoisomerism and optical activity, asymmetric carbon atom (1874), osmosis.
Emil Fischer & & & (1852 - 1919), purines, sugars (1883), peptides, proteins, amino acids, enzyme chemistry 1894.
James Mackenzie (1853 - 1925), The Future of Medicine 1919.
Hendrik Lorentz (1853 - 1928), special relativity Lorentz transformation 1904.
Patrick Geddes & & (1854 - 1932), Evolution of Sex 1889, Sex 1914.
Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski (1857 - 1924), author Heart of Darkness (1899).
Andrija Mohorovicic (1857 - 1936) seismologist, identified Earth has an outer crust over a denser, hotter mantle 2900km thick.
Max Planck (1858 - 1947), quantum theory of black body radiation.
R. D. Oldham & & (1858 - 1936) analysed seismograph waves and concluded that Earth had a dense core 7000km in diameter.
Henry Havelock Ellis & & (1859 - 1939), Sexual Inversion 1915.
John Milne & (1859-1913), studied earthquakes and developed a seismograph for recording shock waves.
Eduard Buchner (1860 - 1917), On alcoholic fermentation without yeast cells (1897), Zymosis 1903.
William Bateson (1861 - 1926), genetics.
Vilhelm Bjerknes & & (1862 - 1951), weather forecasting.
Thomas Hunt Morgan & & & (1866 - 1945), genes and chromosomes, Heredity and Sex (1914).
Fritz Haber & & & & (1868 - 1934), synthesis of ammonia.
Ales Hrdlicka & & (1869 - 1943), The Old Americans 1925, anthropology.
Bertram Boltwood (1870 - 1927), first used radioactivity to estimate date of rocks 1911.
Ernest Rutherford & & & & & (1871 - 1937), discovered atoms consisted of a very small heavy nucleus with surrounding cloud of electrons (1911), Radioactive Substances and their Radiations 1913.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970),
Russell's Paradox (1901), Principles of Mathematics (1903).
Elsie Clews Parsons & & & (1874 - 1941), The Old-Fashioned Woman 1913.
Milutin Milankovitch & cycles & & (1879 - 1958), climate cycles.
Albert Einstein & & & (1879 - 1955),
Some Papers & & 1905, Relativity: The Special and General Theory & 1916.
Alfred Wegener & & & (1880 - 1930) formulated theories of continental drift.
Irving Langmuir (1881 - 1957).
Robert H. Goddard & (1882 - 1945), rocket scientist.
John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946), General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money 1936.
Motonori Matuyama & & (1884 - 1958), discovered that the Earth's magnetic polarity reverses.
Niels Bohr & & & & (1885 - 1962), quantised theory of atom, On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules (1913) Atomic Structure (1921).
Erwin Schrodinger (1887 - 1961), wave equations of quantum theory.
Alexander Friedmann (1888 - 1925), theory of an expanding universe (1922).
Edwin Hubble & & & & (1889 - 1953), distance of Andromeda galaxy (1924), redshift observations support expanding universe 1929, The Realm of the Nebulae 1936.
Louis de Broglie (1892 - 1987), quantum wave-particle duality.
Jacob Bjerknes (1897 - 1975), weather forecasting.
Werner Heisenberg (1901 - 1976), matrix equations of quantum theory, uncertainty principle.
Karl Popper (1902 - 1994), Die Logik der Forschung (The Logic of Scientific Discovery) 1934 (translated 1959).
Paul Dirac & (1902 - 1984) Prediction of antimatter positron 1927.
George Orwell & & & aka Eric Blair, (1903 - 1950), Animal Farm 1945, Politics and the English Language 1946, 1984 1948, Principles of Newspeak &.
George Gamow (1904 - 1968), astrophysics, The Origin of Chemical Elements (1948), with Alpher and Bethe, predicted the level of microwave background radiation.
Graham Greene (1904 - 1991), novelist, Brighton Rock 1938, The Third Man 1949.
Carl D. Anderson & (1905 - 1991), Discovery of positron 1932.
Konrad Lorenz (1903 - 1989) Biography and links. Imprinting in young birds 1935, ethology.
Rachel Carson & & & & (1907 - 1964), Silent Spring 1962.
William Golding & & & (1911 - 1993), Lord of the Flies 1954, The Inheritors 1955.
Isaiah Berlin (1909 - 1997), Two Concepts of Liberty 1958.
Alan Turing & & & & & & & & (1912 - 1954), Computing Machinery and Intelligence 1950.
Elso Barghoorn & (1915 - 1984), precambrian fossils.
Fred Hoyle (1915 - 2001), astrophysics, nucleosynthesis (1946), The Nature of the Universe (1950) proposed a steady state cosmology in opposition to what he called the "big bang" theory.
Francis Crick & & & (1916 - 2004), Crick papers.
Maurice Wilkins (1916 - 2004). Discovery of Structure of DNA, Of Molecules and Men 1966.
James Lovelock & & & (1919 - ), Gaia hypothesis.
Henri Tajfel (1919 - 1982), group rivalry experiments 1963.
John Maynard Smith (1920 - 2004), evolutionist.
Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958), X-ray crystallographer.
John Rawls (1921 - 2002), A Theory of Justice & & (1971), Political Liberalism (1996).
Freeman Dyson (1923 - ), Time without end 1979.
James Watson & & & & & (1928 - ), The Double Helix & 1968, The Molecular Biology of the Gene, Human Genome Project.
Edward O. Wilson & (1929 - ), Sociobiology 1975.
William D. Hamilton (1936 - 2000), altruism in evolution.
Richard Dawkins & & (1941 - ), selfish gene.
Dan Mckenzie & & & (1942 - ) developed geological theory of plate tectonics.
Stephen Hawking & (1942 - ), A Brief History of Time.
Anton Zeilinger & (1945 - ), H. C. von Baeyer, In the Begining was the Bit: Zeilinger's Quantum interpretation.
Gregory Chaitin & (1947 - ), Godel's Theorem and Information 1982.
Robert Axelrod & (1948? - ), Complexity of Cooperation.
David Deutsch & (1953 - ), quantum computers.
Steven Benner & (1956? - ), synthetic biology, genomics.
Stephen Wolfram & & (1959 - ), A New Kind of Science, Reviews by S. Weinberg and D. Naiditch.
Superstring Theory official site.
J. G. Gilson on Fine Structure Constant.
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Mission and results.
E. H. Hagen: Evolutionary Psychology 2002 problems.
Obviously there is a lot more work to be done on these pages!