Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was born in London in 1561, the son of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He entered Cambridge at twelve and was deeply dissatisfied with the dull Aristotelian scholasticism taught there. Under James I he rose to great office, becoming Attorney General, Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor, and was made a viscount; but in 1621 he was impeached by Parliament for taking bribes, fined, briefly imprisoned and driven from public life. Thereafter he devoted himself to writing. On a cold day in 1626, wishing to test whether freezing would preserve flesh, he stopped his carriage, bought a chicken and stuffed it with snow; he caught a chill and died a few days later. He is called the father of modern experimental science.