Scientists through history
The atlas holds 62 people and 1,917 moments here, from 563 BC to 2023. The most recorded lives are Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Leonardo da Vinci. Across the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment.
Notable people
Nicolaus Copernicus
from 1473 to 1543
15 moments here
Renaissance astronomer, canon, physician, administrator, and economist whose heliocentric model placed the Sun rather than Earth at the center of the…
Nikola Tesla
from 1856 to 1943
34 moments here
Serbian-American engineer and inventor best known for foundational work on alternating-current power systems, the induction motor, high-frequency…
Omar Khayyam
from 1048 to 1131
5 moments here
Persian polymath, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. The securely dated portions of his documented life place him in Nishapur,…
Ptolemy
from 127 to 141
2 moments here
Claudius Ptolemy was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and music theorist.…
Raisa Gorbacheva
from 1932 to 1999
26 moments here
Soviet and Russian activist, philanthropist, lecturer, and public figure; wife of Mikhail Gorbachev.…
René Descartes
from 1596 to 1650
45 moments here
French philosopher, mathematician, and natural philosopher whose methodic doubt, mind-body distinction, analytic techniques, and mechanical account…
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.…
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).…
Stephen Hawking
from 1942 to 2018
23 moments here
English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author whose work on singularities, black-hole thermodynamics, and Hawking radiation reshaped modern…
The Buddha
from 563 BC to 483 BC
18 moments here
Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and teacher who founded Buddhism in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain.…
Theodore Roosevelt
from 1858 to 1919
33 moments here
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1858–1919) was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909.…
Thomas Edison
from 1847 to 1931
39 moments here
American inventor and industrialist whose laboratories developed and commercialized technologies in telegraphy, recorded sound, electric lighting and…
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…
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…