Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon lived circa 1219/20 to circa 1292 and, known by the scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, was a medieval English polymath, philosopher, scientist, theologian and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism, intertwining his Catholic faith with scientific thinking; he is considered one of the greatest polymaths of the medieval period. In the early modern era he was regarded as a wizard, particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head, and he is credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method, alongside his teacher Robert Grosseteste, applying the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham, known as Alhazen, to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle and discovering the importance of empirical testing when his own results diverged from Aristotelian predictions. His linguistic work has been heralded for its early exposition of a universal grammar, though twenty-first century re-evaluations emphasize that Bacon was essentially a medieval thinker whose experimental knowledge was largely drawn from books in the scholastic tradition; he was nonetheless partially responsible for revising the medieval university curriculum to add optics to the traditional quadrivium. His major work, the Opus Majus, was sent to Pope Clement IV in Rome in 1267 at the pope's own request, and although gunpowder was first invented and described in China, Bacon was the first in Europe to record its formula.