a German knight, scholar, poet and satirist, who later became a follower of Martin Luther and a Protestant reformer.

a German chemist. His most notable work was done with Kurt Alder on the Diels–Alder reaction, a method for diene synthesis.

a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spinal cord.

a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist

a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), he developed a friendship with the already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

an Italian physician, physicist, biologist and philosopher, who discovered animal electricity