Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 at Malmesbury in southern England; it is said that his mother went into early labour on hearing that the Spanish Armada was coming, and he later said that she 'brought forth twins, myself and fear'. After Oxford he served for many years as tutor in the Cavendish family, travelled several times on the Continent and met Galileo and Descartes. At forty he happened upon Euclid's Elements and was so struck by its rigorous reasoning that he resolved to study politics by the geometrical method. On the eve of the English Civil War he fled to Paris, where he wrote Leviathan. He lived to ninety-one.