PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: alchemy

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Consider how Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity led to a better understanding of planetary motion
English physicist and mathematician
Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated...
Paracelsus
German-Swiss physician
Paracelsus was a German-Swiss physician and alchemist who established the role of chemistry in medicine. He published Der grossen Wundartzney (Great Surgery Book) in 1536 and a clinical description of...
Roger Bacon
English philosopher and scientist
Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan philosopher and educational reformer who was a major medieval proponent of experimental science. Bacon studied mathematics, astronomy, optics, alchemy, and languages....
Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, Abū Mūsā
Muslim alchemist
Abū Mūsā Jābir ibn Ḥayyān was a Muslim alchemist known as the father of Arabic chemistry. He systematized a “quantitative” analysis of substances and was the inspiration for Geber, a Latin alchemist who...
John Dee
English mathematician
John Dee was an English mathematician, natural philosopher, and student of the occult. Dee entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1542, where he earned a bachelor’s degree (1545) and a master’s degree...
Persian physician
Al-Rāzī was a celebrated alchemist and Muslim philosopher who is also considered to have been the greatest physician of the Islamic world. One tradition holds that al-Rāzī was already an alchemist before...
German chemist and physician
Andreas Libavius was a German chemist, physician, and alchemist who made important chemical discoveries but is most noted as the author of the first modern chemistry textbook. Libavius was professor of...
Jakob Böhme
German mystic
Jakob Böhme was a German philosophical mystic who had a profound influence on such later intellectual movements as idealism and Romanticism. Erklärung über das erste Buch Mosis, better known as Mysterium...
Chinese monk
Ch’ang-ch’un was a Taoist monk and alchemist who journeyed from China across the heartland of Asia to visit Genghis Khan, the famed Mongol conqueror, at his encampment north of the Hindu Kush mountains....
Chinese alchemist
Ge Hong was a figure in Chinese Daoism, perhaps the best-known alchemist, who tried to combine Confucian ethics with the occult doctrines of Daoism. In his youth he received a Confucian education, but...
Daoist leader
Sima Chengzhen was the sixth patriarch of the Shangqing school of Daoism, who had many associations with famous poets such as Li Bai and Wang Wei during the Tang dynasty. Called to court during the reign...