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William Shakespeare's birthdate is assumed from his baptism on April 25. His father John was the son of a farmer who became a successful tradesman; his mother Mary Arden was gentry. He studied Latin works at Stratford Grammar School, leaving at about age 15. About this time his father suffered an unknown financial setback, though the family home remained in his possession. An affair with Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior and a nearby farmer's daughter, led to pregnancy and a hasty marriage late in 1582. Susanna was born in May of 1583, twins Hamnet and Judith in January of 1585. By 1592 he was an established actor and playwright in London though his "career path" afterward (fugitive? butcher? soldier? actor?) is highly debated. When plague closed the London theatres for two years he apparently toured; he also wrote two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". He may have spent this time at the estate of the Earl of Southampton. By December 1594 he was back in London as a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company he stayed with the rest of his life. In 1596 he seems to have purchased a coat of arms for his father; the same year Hamnet died at age 11. The following year he purchased the grand Stratford mansion New Place. A 1598 edition of "Love's Labors" was the first to bear his name, though he was already regarded as England's greatest playwright. He is believed to have written his "Sonnets" during the 1590s. In 1599 he became a partner in the new Globe Theatre, the company of which joined the royal household on the accession of James in 1603. That is the last year in which he appeared in a cast list. He seems to have retired to Stratford in 1612, where he continued to be active in real estate investment. The cause of his death is unknown.

Born the son of a shoe-maker two months before the birth of another famous playwright, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe achieved fame as an Elizabethan dramatist as well as an atheist. He was killed in a tavern brawl by a former friend, allegedly over a bill. There is now some evidence that suggests his death was in fact an assassination.

In 1575 Galileo moved to Florence with his parents. He returned to Pisa in 1581 to study mathematics, where he studied until 1585. At the Florentine Accademia del Disegno he became acquainted with the writings of Archimdes and in 1586 constructed a hydrostatic balance. In 1589 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa and in 1592 at the University of Padua. In his precision engineering workshop he developed a proportion compass, found the laws for the string pendulum and derived the fall laws. His daughters Virginia and Livia were born in 1600 and 1601 and his son Vincenzo in 1591 in 1606. Galileo, who was enthusiastic about natural science, excelled in astronomical studies in 1606 following the appearance of a new star. For this purpose, in Padua he further developed a telescope that had been built in Holland, with the help of which he was able to demonstrate the structure of the Milky Way and the surface of the moon.

In January 1610 he discovered the first four moons of Jupiter, which he named "Medicea Sidera" in honor of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de' Medici. This discovery was significant because Jupiter's gravitational system led the researcher to gradually develop his theory of the solar-centered planetary system. After Galileo returned to Florence in July 1610, in the same year the Grand Duke of Tuscany appointed him the first mathematician and philosopher in the state for his astronomical research. His astronomical research results, which now also included sunspots and the ring of Saturn, were received by scientific and religious-philosophical experts, sometimes with extreme skepticism and sometimes with enthusiasm. In particular, Galileo came into conflict early on with the discovery of ever new celestial phenomena, particularly with Aristotelian philosophy, which was based on the perfection and immutability of the cosmos.

His scientific findings were initially recognized by the Catholic Church. In 1611, on the occasion of his visit to Pope Paul V, Galileo saw himself accepted into the Roman "Academia dei Lincei" and honored by the papal scholars. However, his research into the solar system led to far-reaching consequences for the religious-philosophical world view of the time: Galileo gained a heliocentric model of the world from this, which was based on the scientific knowledge that the planets revolved around the sun and therefore not the Earth but the sun was the center of the solar system system. In doing so, he demonstrated for the first time through scientific and astronomical observations and research a theory that had been developed and published by Nicholas Copernicus since 1514. As his teaching, which was in clear contradiction to the geocentric worldview of the Bible, became increasingly widespread, the Catholic authorities became increasingly concerned.

In 1615, a Dominican monk denounced Galileo as a heretic at the Congregation of the Sacred Uffizi in Rome, i.e. H. at the Papal Inquisition Court. In 1616, the Inquisition court condemned the Copernican doctrine as an error. Galileo was forbidden from further disseminating it, and Nicholas Copernicus's 1543 treatise was placed on the index of forbidden literature. In the following years, which Galileo Galilei spent in Florence until 1631 and then in nearby Arcetri, he adhered to the commandment imposed on him, but devoted himself increasingly to the refutation of Aristotelian-scholastic physics. During this time, one of his most witty writings, the "Saggiatore" (Tester with the Gold Scales), was written. As a result of the change of pope (Urban VIII), in 1632 he was able to obtain initial ecclesiastical approval to publish another work, the "Dialogue on the two principal world systems, the Ptolemaic and the Copernian". Soon afterwards, however, the Jesuits banned the publication.

In the same year, Galileo was again summoned before the Roman Inquisitorial Court, which sentenced him on June 22, 1633 to renounce the disputed doctrine. The prison sentence imposed on him was converted into banishment by Pope Urban VIII a few months later. The legend is considered historically controversial, according to which Galileo immediately after the forced renunciation said "And it (the earth) moves!" would have insisted on the validity of the Copernican theory of the Earth revolving around the fixed star, the Sun. Galileo spent the following years in exile on his estate in Arcetri near Florence, where he continued the research he had begun earlier in the areas of mechanics, motion and gravity. It was not until 1638 that he achieved a partial relaxation of the banishment sentence so that he could also stay in Florence. In 1634 his dearest daughter Virginia died. Another stroke of fate struck him in the same year t because he became blind and could only continue his work to a limited extent.

Galileo Galilei died on January 8, 1642 at the age of 77 in Arcetri and was buried in Santa Croce, the Church of the Holy Cross, in Florence.

It took the Catholic Church more than a century to recognize the teachings of Copernicus and Galileo in 1757 and to remove their works from the index of banned books. It was only under Pope John Paul II in 1992/93 that she acknowledged the miscarriage of justice that had once been committed with the rehabilitation of both scholars. In recent research, the theory is increasingly being put forward that Galileo was condemned at the time because of his deviation from the Tridentine doctrine of the Eucharist. Galileo and René Descartes founded a new age of scientific teaching through a change in method. He doesn't ask the "why" of a process but rather the "how."