Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was a true polymath, and one of the most learned men of his day. He matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of 12, and also attended the University of Poitiers. At Cambridge, he came to the attention of Queen Elizabeth I of England, who called him ‘the young Lord Keeper’. After several years traveling the continent and expanding his learning, Bacon was admitted as a barrister in 1582 and became an MP. He was an outspoken and liberal politician, and his opposition to high taxation and feudal rights brought him into conflict with the Queen.
He prospered under Elizabeth’s successor, James I, and his unwavering support for the monarch’s oft-eccentric policies was rewarded with a knighthood in 1603. He later became Lord Chancellor, but his great debts saw him removed from the post and suffer public disgrace. However, it was in the field of science that Bacon truly excelled. He is credited as the founder of empiricism – the principle that knowledge only comes from sensory experience – which radically transformed scientific methodology and changed science into the rational discipline that it is today. He also published influential and much-quoted tracts on philosophy, law, and religion.
Bacon died conducting an experiment, but it was still an inglorious way for such a learned man to go. Traveling to Highgate, North London, in the snow, Bacon was suddenly inspired to test the potential of snow for meat preservation. Stopping his carriage and buying a fowl from a nearby house, Bacon stuffed it with snow. Unfortunately, according to his near-contemporary, John Aubrey, ‘The Snow so chilled him that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his Lodging’. He never left Arundel Mansion, where he was carried, and died of pneumonia on April 9, 1626.