Petrarch Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo Original lyrics by Petrarch, found in 1985 in Erfurt Biography[edit] Youth and early career[edit] Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco and his wife Eletta Canigiani. Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He traveled widely in Europe and served as an ambassador and has been called "the first tourist"[6] because he traveled just for pleasure,[7] which was the basic reason he climbed Mont Ventoux.[8] During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome and Greece. Mount Ventoux[edit] Scholars[14] note that Petrarch's letter[15][16] to Dionigi displays a strikingly "modern" attitude of aesthetic gratification in the grandeur of the scenery and is still often cited in books and journals devoted to the sport of mountaineering. Later years[edit] Giovanni died of the plague in 1361. Works[edit]
Dr. Susan Blackmore Juana Inés de la Cruz Sister (Spanish: Sor) Juana Inés de la Cruz, O.S.H. (English: Joan Agnes of the Cross) (12 November 1651 – 17 April 1695), was a self-taught scholar and poet of the Baroque school, and Hieronymite nun of New Spain. Although she lived in a colonial era when Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, she is considered today both a Mexican writer and a contributor to the Spanish Golden Age, and she stands at the beginning of the history of Mexican literature in the Spanish language. Early life[edit] A portrait of Juana during her youth in 1666, which states she was 15 at the time, when she first entered the viceregal court She was born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in San Miguel Nepantla (now called Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in her honor) near Mexico City. Juana was a devoutly religious child who often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. Death[edit] Posthumous[edit] Works[edit] Legacy[edit]
Eratosthenes Eratosthenes of Cyrene (Ancient Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης, IPA: [eratostʰénɛːs]; English /ɛrəˈtɒsθəniːz/; c. 276 BC[1] – c. 195/194 BC[2]) was a Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. He invented the discipline of geography, including the terminology used today.[3] Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology; he endeavored to revise the dates of the chief literary and political events from the conquest of Troy. He was a figure of influence who declined to specialize in only one field. Seventeen hundred years after Eratosthenes' death, while Christopher Columbus studied what Eratosthenes had written about the size of the Earth, he chose to believe that the Earth's circumference was much smaller. Life[edit] These works and his great poetic abilities led the pharaoh Ptolemy III Euergetes to seek to place him as a librarian at the Library of Alexandria in the year 245 BC.
Enheduanna Regarded by literary and historical scholars as possibly the earliest known author and poet, Enheduanna served as the High Priestess during the third millennium BCE.[1] She was appointed to the role by her father, King Sargon of Akkad. Her mother was Queen Tashlultum.[7][8] Enheduanna has left behind a corpus of literary works, definitively ascribed to her, that include several personal devotions to the goddess Inanna and a collection of hymns known as the "Sumerian Temple Hymns," regarded as one of the first attempts at a systematic theology. In addition, scholars, such as Hallo and Van Dijk, suggest that certain texts not ascribed to her may also be her works.[9] Enheduanna was appointed to the role of High Priestess in what is considered to be a shrewd political move by Sargon to help cement power in the Sumerian south where the City of Ur was located.[10] She continued to hold office during the reign of Rimush, her brother. Archaeological and textual evidence[edit] See also[edit]
Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola - Wikipedia Altamira cave[edit] The Altamira cave, now famous for its unique collection of prehistoric art, was well known to local people, but had not been given much attention until in 1868, when it was "discovered" by the hunter Modesto Peres. Sautuola then started exploring the caves in 1875. He did not become aware of the paintings, however, until 1879, when his daughter Maria, nine years old at the time, incidentally noticed that the ceiling was covered by images of bisons. Sautuola, having seen similar images engraved on Paleolithic objects displayed at the World Exposition in Paris the year before, rightly assumed that the paintings might also date from the Stone Age. Publication[edit] Professor Juan Vilanova y Piera supported Sautuola's assumptions, and they published their results in 1880,[1] to much public acclaim. María de Sautuola, the discoverer of the Altamira paintings Legacy[edit] Family[edit] References[edit]
Ada Lovelace - Wikipedia English mathematician (1815–1852) Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She was the first to recognise the machine had applications beyond pure calculation. Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and reformer Anne Isabella Milbanke.[2] Lord Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born, and died when she was eight. Lovelace's educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday, and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Biography Childhood Lord Byron expected his child to be a "glorious boy" and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl. Adult years Education Death Work
Walter Rodney Walter Anthony Rodney (23 March 1942 – 13 June 1980) was a prominent historian, political activist and scholar from Guyana. He was assassinated in Guyana in 1980. Career[edit] Born into a working-class family, Walter Rodney was a very bright student, attending Queen's College in the then British Guiana (now Guyana), where he became a champion debater and athlete, and then attending university on a scholarship at the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) in Jamaica, graduating in 1963 with a first-class degree in History, thereby winning the Faculty of Arts prize. Rodney earned a PhD in African History in 1966 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, England, at the age of 24. Rodney traveled widely and became very well known internationally as an activist, scholar and formidable orator. On 15 October 1968 the government of Jamaica, led by prime minister Hugh Shearer, declared Rodney persona non grata. Later life[edit] Assassination[edit] Academic influence[edit]
Ptolemy Background[edit] Engraving of a crowned Ptolemy being guided by the muse Astronomy, from Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch, 1508. Although Abu Ma'shar believed Ptolemy to be one of the Ptolemies who ruled Egypt after the conquest of Alexander the title ‘King Ptolemy’ is generally viewed as a mark of respect for Ptolemy's elevated standing in science. Perhaps for no other reason than the association of name, the 9th-century Persian astronomer Abu Ma'shar assumed Ptolemy to be a member of Egypt's royal lineage, stating that the ten kings of Egypt who followed Alexander were wise "and included Ptolemy the Wise, who composed the book of the Almagest". Astronomy[edit] The Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Ptolemy presented a useful tool for astronomical calculations in his Handy Tables, which tabulated all the data needed to compute the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets, the rising and setting of the stars, and eclipses of the Sun and Moon.
Thomas Young (scientist) 18th/19th-century English polymath Thomas Young FRS (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) was a British polymath who made notable contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology. He was instrumental in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, specifically the Rosetta Stone. Sacred to the memory of Thomas Young, M.D., Fellow and Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society Member of the National Institute of France; a man alike eminent in almost every department of human learning. Plate from "Lectures" of 1802 (RI), pub. 1807 Young performed and analysed a number of experiments, including interference of light from reflection off nearby pairs of micrometre grooves, from reflection off thin films of soap and oil, and from Newton's rings. Young's Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy Young devised a rule of thumb for determining a child's drug dosage. Young developed Young temperament, a method of tuning musical instruments.
Rubik’s Cube Inventor Opens Up About His Creation in New Book 'Cubed' “On the way to trying to understand the nature of the cube, I changed my mind,” Rubik said. “What really interested me was not the nature of the cube, but the nature of people, the relationship between people and the cube.” Reading “Cubed” can be a strange, disorienting experience, one that’s analogous to picking up and twisting one of his cubes. It lacks a clear narrative structure or arc — an effect that’s deliberate, Rubik said. “I had several ideas, and I thought to share this mixture of ideas that I have in my mind and leave it to the reader to find out which ones are valuable,” he said. Or you can start at the beginning. Erno Rubik was born on July 13, 1944, about a month after D-Day, in the basement of a Budapest hospital that had become an air-raid shelter. As a boy, Rubik loved to draw, paint and sculpt. In the spring of 1974, when he was 29, Rubik was in his bedroom at his mother’s apartment, tinkering.