Aristotle

Aristotle was born in 384 BC at Stagira in northern Greece, the son of a physician to the king of Macedon. At seventeen he came to Athens and spent twenty years in Plato's Academy as student and teacher. After Plato's death he travelled in Asia Minor and on Lesbos, doing research in biology, and was then invited by Philip II of Macedon to tutor the young Alexander. In 335 BC he returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum; because he taught while walking in its grounds, his school was called the Peripatetic.

Aristotle laid the foundations of almost every field of knowledge: logic, metaphysics, physics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetics. In the Middle Ages Arabic and Latin scholars called him simply 'the Philosopher', and his works remain a pillar of Western thought. He died at Chalcis on Euboea in 322 BC.