Biographies of scholars such as Leonardo da Vinci, Kelly Miller, Rene Descartes, Leonhard Euler, Nicolaus Copernicus, Alan Turing and other scientists who have made an invaluable contribution to science. Their ways of life and achievements in science.
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Leonardo da Vinci Biography Writer, Mathematician, Inventor, Artist (1452-1519) Leonardo da Vinci was a leading artist and intellectual of the Italian Renaissance whos known for his enduring works The Last Supper and Mona Lisa. Synopsis Born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was concerned with the laws of science and nature, which greatly informed his work as a painter, sculptor, inventor and draftsmen. His ideas and body of work-which includes Virgin of the Rocks, The Last Supper, Leda and the Swan and Mona Lisa-have influenced countless artists and made da Vinci a leading light of the Italian Renaissance. Humble Beginnings Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy. Born out of wedlock, the love child of a respected notary and a young peasant woman, he was raised by his father, Ser Piero, and his stepmothers. At the age of 14, da Vinci began apprenticing with the artist Verrocchio. For six years, he learned a wide breadth of technical skills, including metalworking, leather arts, carpentry, drawing and sculpting. By the age of 20, he had qualified as a master artist in the Guild of Saint Luke and established his own workshop. Florentine court records show that da Vinci was charged with and acquitted of sodomy at the age of 22, and for two years, his whereabouts went entirely undocumented. The Last Supper In 1482, Lorenzo de Medici, a man from a prominent Italian family, commissioned da Vinci to create a silver lyre and bring it to Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan, as a gesture of peace. Da Vinci did so and then wrote Ludovico a letter describing how his engineering and artistic talents would be of great service to Ludovicos court. His letter successfully endeared him to Ludovico, and from 1482 until 1499, Leonardo was commissioned to work on a great many projects. It was during this time that da Vinci painted The Last Supper. Mona Lisa Da Vincis most well-known painting, and arguably the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, was a privately commissioned work and was completed sometime between 1505 and 1507. Of the paintings wide appeal, James Beck, an art historian at Columbia University, once explained, It is the inherent spirituality of the human creature that Leonardo was able to ingenuine to the picture that raises the human figure to some kind of majesty. Its been said that the Mona Lisa had jaundice, that she was a pregnant woman and that she wasnt actually a woman at all, but a man in drag. Based on accounts from an early biographer, however, the Mona Lisa is a picture of Lisa Gioconda, the real-life wife of a merchant, but thats far from certain. For da Vinci, the Mona Lisa was forever a work in progress, as it was his attempt at perfection. The painting was never delivered to its commissioner; da Vinci kept it with him until the end of his life. Today, the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, secured behind bulletproof glass, and is regarded as a priceless national treasure. Renaissance Man Da Vinci has been called a genius and the archetypal Renaissance man. His talents inarguably extended far beyond his artistic works. Like many leaders of Renaissance humanism, he did not see a divide between science and art. His observations and inventions were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, including designs for flying machines (some 400 years before the Wright brothers first success), plant studies, war machinery, anatomy and architecture.