Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Christiaan Huygens, FRS s] ; was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist and horologist. His work included early telescopic studies elucidating the nature of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan, the invention of the pendulum clock and other investigations in... timekeeping, and studies of both optics and the centrifugal force. Huygens achieved note for his argument that light consists of waves, now known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle, which two centuries later became instrumental in the understanding of wave-particle duality. He generally receives credit for his discovery of the centrifugal force, the laws for collision of bodies, for his role in the development of modern calculus and his original observations on sound perception . Christiaan Huygens was born in April 1629 at The Hague, the second son of Constantijn Huygens, , a friend of mathematician, philosopher and minor physicist René Descartes, and of Suzanna van Baerle , whom Constantijn had married on 6 April 1627.
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Francisco Suárez was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement, and generally regarded among the greatest scholastics after Thomas Aquinas. Francisco Suárez was born in Granada, Andalusia . At age sixteen... Suárez entered the Society of Jesus in Salamanca, and he studied Philosophy and Theology there for five years from 1565 to 1570. It seems he was not a promising student at first; in fact, he nearly gave up his matters of study after failing the entrance exam twice. After passing the exam at third attempt, though, things changed, and he completed his course of Philosophy with distinction, going on to study Theology, to then teach Philosophy in Ávila and Segovia. He was ordained in 1572, and taught Theology in Ávila, Segovia , Valladolid , Rome , Alcalá , Salamanca , and Coimbra . He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, producing a vast amount of work .
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Anselm of Canterbury , also called of Aosta for his birthplace, and of Bec for his home monastery, was a Benedictine monk, a philosopher, and a prelate of the Church who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. Called the founder of scholasticism, he is famous as the... originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Born into the House of Candia, he entered the Benedictine order at the Abbey of Bec at the age of 27, where he became abbot in 1079. He became Archbishop of Canterbury under William II of England, and was exiled from England from 1097 to 1100, and again from 1105 to 1107 under Henry I of England as a result of the investiture controversy, the most significant conflict between Church and state in Medieval Europe. Anselm was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1720 by a Papal Bull of Pope Clement XI. Anselm was born under the name "Anselmus Candiae Genavae" at or near Aosta in the Kingdom of Arles around 1033.
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Baruch Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical... criticism, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes's mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important contributors. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely." Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporary philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." Spinoza's name in different languages is Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה‎ Baruch Spinoza, Portuguese: Benedito or Bento de Espinosa and Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza; in all these languages, the given name means "the Blessed".
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