List of medieval European scientists
[1] Nemesius (?-c. 390), a bishop of Emesa whose De Natura Hominis blended theology with Galenic medicine and is notable for his ideas concerning the brain.
He was one of the two main Byzantine Greek architects (Anthemius of Tralles was the other) that Emperor Justinian I commissioned to design the cathedral Hagia Sophia in Constantinople from 532 to 537.
534), a Byzantine professor of geometry and architecture, authored many influential works on mathematics and was one of the architects of the famed Hagia Sophia, the largest building in the world at its time.
570), also known as John the Grammarian, a Christian Byzantine philosopher, launched a revolution in the understanding of physics by critiquing and correcting the earlier works of Aristotle.
Although his works were repressed at various times in the Byzantine Empire, because of religious controversy, they would nevertheless become important to the understanding of physics throughout Europe and the Arab world.
672–735), a Christian monk of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow who wrote a work On the Nature of Things, several books on the mathematical / astronomical subject of computus, the most influential entitled On the Reckoning of Time.
Rabanus Maurus (c. 780 – 856), a Christian monk and teacher, later archbishop of Mainz, who wrote a treatise on Computus and the encyclopedic work De universo.
He wrote book-length works, poems, and many epigrams, and was also a compiler, who brought together a wide range of philosophical, medical, and astronomic texts.
[6][citation needed] He is most famous, though, for having helped transmit knowledge of mathematics and astronomy to Muslim Spain and Christian Western Europe.
He combined Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine and initiated a renewal of Byzantine classical learning that later influenced the Italian Renaissance.
He also made contributions to Byzantine culture, such of a reform of the university curriculum to emphasize the Greek classics, like the Homeric literature that, with Platonist thought, he understood as precursory to Christian revelation.
Constantine the African (c. 1020–1087), a Christian native of Carthage, is best known for his translating of ancient Greek and Roman medical texts from Arabic into Latin while working at the Schola Medica Salernitana in Salerno, Italy.
Arzachel (1028–1087), the foremost astronomer of the early second millennium, lived in Al-Andalus and greatly expanded the understanding and accuracy of planetary models and terrestrial measurements used for navigation.
[9] Avenzoar (1091–1161), from Al-Andalus, introduced an experimental method in surgery, employing animal testing in order to experiment with surgical procedures before applying them to human patients.
[12][13] Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253), Bishop of Lincoln, was the central character of the English intellectual movement in the first half of the 13th century and is considered the founder of scientific thought in Oxford.
Albert was an essential figure in introducing Greek and Islamic science into the medieval universities, although not without hesitation with regard to particular Aristotelian theses.
John of Sacrobosco (c. 1195 – c. 1256) was a scholar, monk, and astronomer (probably English, but possibly Irish or Scottish) who taught at the University of Paris and wrote an authoritative and influential mediaeval astronomy text, the Tractatus de Sphaera; the Algorismus, which introduced calculations with Hindu-Arabic numerals into the European university curriculum; the Compotus ecclesiasticis on Easter reckoning; and the Tractatus de quadrante on the construction and use of the astronomical quadrant.
He wrote treatises on mechanics ("the science of weights"), on basic and advanced arithmetic, on algebra, on geometry, and on the mathematics of stereographic projection.
He compiled and revised Ancient Greek scripts including, but not limited to Galen, as well as writing his own compendium on medical science, named Dynameron.
His written work had a deep impact on Henri de Mondeville, who studied under him while living in Italy and later became the court physician for King Philip IV of France.
Arnaldus de Villa Nova (1235-1313) was an alchemist, astrologer, and physician from the Crown of Aragon who translated various Arabic medical texts, including those of Avicenna, and performed optical experiments with camera obscura.
Theodoric of Freiberg (c. 1250 – c. 1311) was a natural philosopher and theologian, who wrote highly original treatise on optics, explaining partially, colors and positions of primary and secondary rainbows[17] Pseudo-Geber (fl late 13 century) was an alchemist, who wrote Summa perfectionis magisterii, the most important medieval alchemical treaty.
His extant works comprises 20 Poems in dactylic hexameter, 18 orations (Logoi), Commentaries on Aristotle's writings on natural philosophy, an introduction to the study of Ptolemaic astronomy (Stoicheiosis astronomike), and 120 essays on various subjects, the Semeioseis gnomikai.
Mondino de Liuzzi (c. 1270-1326) was an Italian physician, surgeon, and anatomist from Bologna who was one of the first in Medieval Europe to advocate for the public dissection of cadavers for advancing the field of anatomy.
Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio (1290-1359) was an Italian doctor, clockmaker, and astronomer from Padua who wrote on a number of scientific subjects such as pharmacology, surgery, astrology, and natural sciences.
Guy de Chauliac (1300-1368) was a French physician and surgeon who wrote the Chirurgia magna, a widely read publication throughout medieval Europe that became one of the standard textbooks for medical knowledge for the next three centuries.
[18] Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio (c. 1330-1388) was a clockmaker from Padua, Italy who designed the astarium, an astronomical clock and planetarium that utilized the escapement mechanism that had been recently invented in Europe.
