Francis Bacon
1561–1626 2 entries
Biography
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher, statesman, lawyer and essayist, one of the founders of modern science. The son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, a high officer of Queen Elizabeth I, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and trained in law. Under James I he rose to become Attorney General and then Lord Chancellor, the highest legal office in England. In 1621 he was found guilty of taking bribes, fined and removed from office, and he spent his remaining years writing.
In his Novum Organum he argued that knowledge should be built on careful observation and experiment, and not on the authority of ancient books. His Essays, short and full of practical wisdom, are among the classics of English prose, and his New Atlantis describes an ideal society devoted to research. He died in 1626, according to a story told soon afterwards, of a chill he caught while stuffing a chicken with snow to see whether the cold would preserve it.