Cheops (ca. 2500 BC): A Pharaoh in ancient Egypt. Very little is actually known about him. He reputedly commissioned the great pyramid at Giza, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Pythagoras of Samos (569 BC - 475 BC): A Greek mathematician and philosopher of almost mythic proportions, he taught that numbers are the essence of all reality. He is remembered chiefly for the Pythagorean theorem, which had been known for a thousand years already when Pythagoras was born. Mises adduces that theorem as an example of an apodictic truth, much like Ricardo's law of comparative cost.

Heraclitus of Ephesos (535 BC - 475 BC): A Greek philosopher of great originality. He taught that all the world is in flux, and that the true underlying reality is an eternal fire. Interestingly, legend has it that he died in a pile of manure while trying to burn an illness out of his body. Mises mentions his name, erroneously, when discussing peace as the foundation of society -- at least, I can't find the "quote" Mises used among the 124 fragments that scholars attribute to Heraclitus.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC): Greek teacher and philosopher. Born in Macedonia, Aristotle was educated in Athens, where he was for many years a student of Plato. After a brief return to Macedonia to tutor Alexander the Great, Aristotle founded his own school of philosophy in Athens. A prolific author, he wrote on a wide variety of subjects -- from zoology and botany to physics, logic, and metaphysics. The Scholastic theologians drew heavily on his Metaphysics, retarding the progress of empirical inquiry during the Middle Ages. Mises mentions Aristotle's objective theory of economic values, which stifled innovation in economics for thousands of years.

Scholastics: Also known as the schoolmen, these Roman Catholic theologians / philosophers dominated European intellectual life during the early medieval period, or, roughly, from 1000 AD until the mid-15th century. The overthrow of Scholasticism by early scientific thinkers like Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Galileo marked the beginning of the Renaissance, which coincided, very nearly, with the heresies of Luther and Calvin, and the Protestant Reformation.

Prominent scholastics included Albertus Magnus, Peter Lombard, St. Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Roscellinus. Mises refers to the Scholastics and scholasticism frequently. Not only did their devotion to Aristotelian and Biblical dogmas retard the progress of empirical science; their metaphysical excesses also sparked an intellectual reaction that threw the introspective procedure native to praxeological inquiry into ill repute, retarding the progress of economic science in the 19th and 20th centuries.

St. Francis d'Assisi (1181 - 1226): Umbrian (central Italian) mystic, sage, and saint. The scion of a noble family, Francis was a warrior in his youth. But he eventually had a mystical experience and began a life of asceticism. A Catholic order, the Franciscans, is named after him. He is also remembered for his vow of poverty, and for his miraculous friendships with birds and animals of every description. Mises mentions him as an example of a sincere religious ascetic.

Santa Clara (Sciffi) (1194 - 1253): Another saint from Umbria. She joined St. Francis at the age of 18, and with his advice and encouragement founded another order (of nuns) known as the Poor Ladies, or the Poor Clares. Mises mentions her name as another example of a person not consumed by ordinary, or mundane, desires.

Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274): Neapolitan theologian, author, and philosopher. Thomas took holy orders against the wishes of his father, a nobleman, and studied under Albertus Magnus. Thoroughly Arisototelian in his outlook, Thomas produced many hermeneutic and exegetical works. His final work, Summum, describes the then prevailing doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church in considerable detail (God, the prime mover, as perfect Love; the Beatific Vision as man's highest calling; Christ as the perfect Soul in an imperfect Body; etc). Many of his teachings are still the official dogma of the Church today. Mises doesn't mention St. Thomas directly, but alludes to him when speaking of medieval Scholasticism and the scholarly confusion that movement spawned.

Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321): Florentine poet, and champion of the literary use of the vernacular tongue. His most famous poem is the Divina Comedia or Divine Comedy, widely regarded as the greatest work of literature an Italian has ever produced. Mises cites him as an exemplar of genius.

William of Ockham (1300? - 1349): English Nominalist philosopher; a prominent scholastic, or schoolman. William revived the doctrine of Nominalism. He was, for a time, head of the Franciscan order. He is remembered today for Ockham's razor, a principle of logic which states that entities (or hypotheses, or reasons) ought not be multiplied unnecessarily. In other words, when two explanations are available, prefer the simpler one. Mises doesn't mention William directly, but he does refer to Realism, Nominalism, and Scholasticism.

Thomas à Kempis (1380 - 1471): German monk and notable holy man. He wrote De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ), one of the most popular devotional books of the medieval period. Mises mentions him in connection with a popular delusion: that somehow the existence of money and commerce prevents mankind from acting as spiritual beings.

Nicolas Copernicus (1473 - 1543): Polish astronomer who overthrew the Ptolemaic, or Earth-centered, view of the solar system and set in motion a train of events leading from the observations of Galileo and Tycho Brahe through the theories of planetary motion advanced by Johannes Kepler and culminating in the invention of the differential calculus and the discovery of the law of universal gravitation by Sir Isaac Newton within 150 years of Copernicus' death. Trained first in mathematics and optics at Cracow, Nicolas traveled in 1496 to Bologna, where he took up the study of the canon law. His astronomical observations evidently commenced while he was in Italy. Returning north, to Prussia, in 1505, he continued his astronomical observations, which for many years were interspersed with his official duties as a judge, tax collector, physician, and military governor. His masterpiece, De Revolutionibus, was complete by 1530, but publication was delayed until his death in 1543, primarily because he feared persecution by the Church. Mises mentions him, along with Galileo and Lavoisier, as an innovator -- an original thinker whose ideas sounded "crazy" when they were first advanced, but which later came to be accepted as the conventional wisdom.

Tudors (1485 - 1603): English royal family. An offshoot of the Plantagenets, there were five Tudor monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I ("Bloody Mary"), and Elizabeth I. Mises mentions the Tudors, along with their successors the Stuarts and the Hanoverians, as exemplars of the lasciviousness to be found even in "Puritanical" England.

Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642): Tuscan physicist and astronomer. A student at first of medicine, Galileo quickly became disgusted with Aristotelianism and set out to discover the truth for himself. His unpopularity with the faculty of the university at Pisa grew rapidly after his famous experiment with falling bodies showed that heavy -- or dense -- bodies fall to the ground at the same rate as lighter -- or less dense -- bodies do, thus contradicting a central tenet of Aristotle's "physics." Under political pressure he moved to Padua (1592), where his lectures on mathematical and physical principles attracted students from all of Europe. By 1610 he was using a refracting telescope to observe the solar system -- he is credited with discovering the four largest moons of Jupiter in that year. In 1613 he published a treatise endorsing the Copernican, or heliocentric, view of the solar system, and his political difficulties with the Holy Roman Catholic Church were off and running at full speed. Forced to recant in 1616, and again in 1632, Galileo never deserted his quest for the truth about physical reality. His inquiring mind and dedication to experimental verification fueled the Renaissance and the rise of rationalism, leading directly to the current ascendancy of science and technology in Western civilization. Mises mentions him, along with Copernicus and Lavoisier, as an innovator -- an original thinker whose ideas sounded "crazy" when they were first advanced, but which later came to be accepted as the conventional wisdom.

Stuarts (1603 - 1714): Monarchs in England. Preceded by the Tudors, and followed by the Hanoverians. There were six Stuart kings / queens: James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II, Mary II ("William and Mary"), and Anne I. The Stuarts were Scottish cousins of the Tudor family. They were also Catholic, which was a facor in the English civil war (1642 - 1651), although that conflict was as much about politics as it was about religion. Mises mentions the Stuarts, as well as the Tudors and the Hanoverians, as exemplars of the lasciviousness which flourished in "Puritanical" England.

Chevalier de Méré (1607 - 1684): French author, amateur mathematician, and gambler. Born Antoine Gombaud, he acquired his "title" as a sort of pen name, assigned by his friends. Mises mentions him in connection with Blaise Pascal, Pierre de Fermat, and the mathematical theory of probability.

Romanoffs (1613 - 1917): Russian ruling family from the accession of Michael I, the son of Anastasia Romanovna and Ivan the Terrible, until the execution of Nicholas II and his family by the Bolsheviks. Mises mentions the fact that most Russians regarded the Romanoffs as inauthentic Russians because of their extensive intermarriages with German royalty as an example of the value judgments enabled by the historian's Verstehen, or understanding.

Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662): French mathematician, philosopher, and theologian. Pascal's mother died when he was only three years old. He was educated by his father, who tried to steer the child away from mathematics. Pascal proved the first 36 propositions in Euclid by himself at the age of 12; his father relented and bought him a copy of Euclid's Elements. In 1641, at the age of 18, Pascal invented a mechanical calculator, an early example of an analog computer. In 1654 Pascal discussed some gambling problems with Pierre de Fermat. Those discussions laid the foundations of the modern theory of probability. In a related piece of work, Traité du triangle arithmétique (Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle), Pascal worked out the binomial coefficients, and the closely related binomial distribution. In 1654 he had an intense religious experience which led him to abandon mathematics in favor of a monastic existence. Mises mentions Pascal's contributions to the mathematics of probability, but asserts that the popular application of that theory to economic problems is inappropriate.

John Locke (1632 - 1704): English philosopher and physician. Educated at Oxford, he early displayed a propensity for free and original thought by rebelling against the prevailing currents of scholasticism and Aristotelianism. The execution of Charles I in 1649 exerted a profound influence on his political views. In 1667 he entered the personal medical service of Anthony Ashley Cooper, who was later (1672) created 1st Earl of Shaftesbury. Locke's subsequent career was thus intimately tied to the fortunes of the Earl, who fell from favor in 1682 when James II (the last Stuart king in Great Britain) discovered his involvement in the attempted coup d'etat staged by the Duke of Monmouth. Thereafter Locke spent several years in Holland, but soon after the "glorious revolution" of 1688 he returned to England.

Generally regarded as the founder -- along with Francis Bacon -- of British Empiricism, Locke's philosophy and polemics are interesting and powerful. The political theory expressed in the Second Treatise on Civil Government (which was published anonymously in 1689) was accepted wholeheartedly by Thomas Jefferson, who incorporated it in the Declaration of Independence. And the epistemological theory advanced in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) -- that the human mind is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, and that all human knowledge is directly rooted in experience -- has exerted a tremendous influence on philosophy, and on psychology, ever since. Mises cites Locke's Essay as the source of a fundamental praxeological notion: that all human action is motivated by some sense of uneasiness.

I admire John Locke's philosophy. Click here to read my favorite bit from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and some very interesting material from Some Observations on the Conduct of the Understanding in the Pursuit of Truth.

Benedict de Spinoza (1632 - 1677): Dutch philosopher. Spinoza's father was a merchant of Portuguese-Jewish descent. The family fled persecution by the Inquisition in Portugal, and settled in Amsterdam, where Benedict was born. He attended school at the local synagogue, but never received much formal education. His father pressed him into the family business while he was still quite young. The family business fell on hard times during the war between Holland and England. Benedict's father died in 1854, leaving a mountain of debt behind him. The family declared bankruptcy soon thereafter. Young Benedict was expelled from the Jewish congregation in 1656. He spent the next five years working as a teacher and learning how to grind lenses. He attended the university for a time, where he studied Latin, Cartesian philosophy, and mathematics. He began exposing his philosophical views to a circle of fellow students around 1660. The group was derisively referred to as atheists by their more orthodox neighbors. Spinoza spent the rest of his life in humble circumstances, living frugally and extending his system of philosophy. He published little during his lifetime; his friends preserved his manuscripts, and had them published after his death. Mises quotes Spinoza: Sane sicut lux se ipsam et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas norma sui et falsi est (Just as light defines the darkness, so truth exposes falsity).

Sir Isaac Newton (1642 - 1726): English mathematician and physicist. Newton's father died before the child was born. Isaac was a premature baby, and very weak and sickly. He never grew to be very tall. His mother abandoned him when he was three years old, so he was raised by his grandmother. Newton attended the King's School in Grantham, where he studied mathematics, Latin, and Greek. When he was nineteen he enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge; he received his B.A. in 1665. Newton was not an outstanding student, but already at the age of 23 he exhibited the genius which marked his later years. In 1669 he was appoiinted Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Newton was developing the calculus and deriving infinite series for the elementary functions at this time. While it is clear that Newton discovered the infinitesimal calculus before Leibniz did, Leibniz published first, and so there was a great deal of acrimony between British and German mathematicians for nearly 20 years. Newton's Principia Mathematica described a theory of universal gravitation that revolutionized the study of astronomy. His book Opticks similarly advanced the scientific understanding of light and color. Later in life, Newton obtained a sinecure as Warden of the Mint. He ascended to the presidency of the Royal Society in 1703, and was knighted by Queen Anne two years later. Mises mentions Newton as an example of genius. Mises also criticizes many other economists for assuming that economic phenomena are susceptible to analysis by the methods of Newtonian mechanics, which do not take account of the categoried ends and means, and treat acting man as a mere automoton.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 - 1716): German philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and diplomat. Liebniz was born in Leipzig.His father, a professor of moral philosophy, died when Gottfried was just six yeaars old, so the boy was raised and educated by his mother. He was a precocious learner and a prolific reader. At 14 he enrolled in the local university, and received his bachelor's degree just two years later. He completed a doctorate in law at the age of twenty. After a few years of civil service, he moveed to Paris, where he met Christian Huygens, who inspired him to study mathematics and physics. A year later he moved to London: his mechanicaal calculator gained him a fellowship in the Royal Society. He joined the Hanoverian court in 1676, where he resided until his death. Liebniz is regarded, along with Newtonn, as the inventor of the calculus. Mises cites Leibniz in support of the proposition that human action is always a reaction to some felt discomfort.

François Quesnay (1694 - 1774): French physician and political economist. Together with Gournay he founded the Physiocrats, who are generally recognized as the first truly scientific school of economic thought. His Tableau économique was the first graphic presentation of the circulation of money throughout an entire economic system. Quesnay served as a medical officer in the courts of Louis XV and his grandson Louis XVI. His friend Turgot actually put some of Quesnay's ideas into practice in the year of the elderly doctor's death. Mises doesn't mention Quesnay directly, but does acknowledge the Physiocrats, along with the classical British economists, as the founders of economic science.

Richard Cantillon (1697 - 1734): French financier, businessman, and economist. His Essai sur la nature du commerce in général (1755) is a very early treatise on economics that probably served as source material for Adam Smith. Mises mentions him in passing as one of the founders of economic science.