Rene Descartes

If Nicholas of Cusa and Ulugh-Beg weren't famous then this man certainly was, and still is. The "father of modern philosophy" and brilliant mathematician has an honoured place in European history but what you might not know is that he also tried to reconcile the church and the Copernicans as to which world-view was correct.

In 1612, at the age of 16, Descartes attended university in Poities, graduating four years later as a lawyer. The telescope had just been invented and Galileo had, only two years before, used one to revolutionise our understanding of the heavens. But the church had changed its attitude to such ideas and when Galileo was condemned in 1633, Descartes decided against publishing a book supporting the Copernican system.

Instead, in 1644 he published his Principia Philosophae in which he said that the Earth was indeed stationary because it was being carried around the Sun amid a vortex of small particles in which it did not move. Space was filled with such vortices made up of particles of different sizes. As they collide they produce fine dust which settles in the center forming a star. His theory went on to account for planets and comets. Due to his well deserved reputation, this view held sway for many decades in his native France and helped keep Newtonian physics from being more widely accepted. Descartes' influence was long lasting, if for all the wrong reasons.

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