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The age of Bacon, Harvey and Descartes was also the age of Kepler. The German astronomer, of Christian Huygens, the Dutch scientist and Galileo the Italian inventor of the refracting telescope with which he proved the trust of the theory of the Polish genius.

Copernicus that the sun and not the earth is the centre of our universe.

The scientific discoveries in the 17th century by these men and others such as Boyle and Hooke in England and Germany were carried forward in England by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) who discovered the law of gravitation and invented a new mathematical system called Differential Calaculus.

Men with enquiring minds were encouraged when Charles II of England granted a charter to found the Royal Society. Whose members met to discuss new ideas and investigate all kinds of phenomena. The French followed suit with their own Academy of Sciences founded in 1666.

The scientific revolution was now under way and after Newton, the 18th century produced a number of remarkable men who, mostly without formal training, and usually having to devise their own apparatus, carried out their experiments and passed on their discoveries to the next generation of enthusiasts. Among them were Antonine Lavoisier(1743-94) the Frenchman who is often called father of modern chemistry; Joseph Priestley, an English clergyman who discovered oxygen; Linnaeus the Swedish botanist; Edward Jenner, whose treatment of small pox in England made him one of the pioneers of preventive medicine; Rene Laennec a Frenchman who invented the stethoscope; Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) the Italian physicist whose investigations into electricity were continued by Michael Faraday(1791-1867) assistant to Sir Humphry Davy, a leading scientist whom he eventually succeeded as Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution founded in London 1799. In his researches. Faraday carried out thousands of experiments and produced the first electric dynamo. In Britain also were Henry Cavendish a rich recluse, who devoted his lonely life to science and John Dalton (1766-1844) a Quaker schoolmaster and chemist, who put forward his Atmomic Theory long before anyone had heard of Nusclear phsics.

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