Inventor · 1706 – 1790
Benjamin Franklin
If you're interested in Benjamin Franklin, these historical figures share a similar impact, discipline, philosophy, or era. Each recommendation explains why the connection exists.
Similar Impact & Significance
George Washington
91George Washington was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolution and the first President of the United States, whose leadership and restraint shaped the new republic.
Why A fellow Founding Father; Franklin's diplomacy supported Washington's war effort.
Voltaire
90Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher and wit, a tireless champion of reason, free speech and religious tolerance and one of the most influential figures of his age.
Why A fellow Enlightenment celebrity; the two famously met in Paris.
Nikola Tesla
90Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer whose pioneering work on alternating current and electromagnetism helped electrify the modern world.
Why A later pioneer of electricity, the field Franklin helped open.
Francis Bacon
82Francis Bacon was an English philosopher, statesman and writer who served as Lord Chancellor and, in works such as the Novum Organum and his Essays, founded the modern scientific method of reasoning from evidence and experiment.
Why Also a statesman & writer · Comparable historical impact
Niccolò Machiavelli
88Niccolò Machiavelli was a Renaissance Italian diplomat, political philosopher and writer whose treatise The Prince founded modern political science and gave his name to ruthless statecraft.
Why Also a writer & statesman · Comparable historical impact
Alexander von Humboldt
81Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian naturalist and explorer whose pioneering expeditions and best-selling books — including the vast Cosmos — founded modern geography and ecology and made him one of the most famous scientists and authors of his age.
Why Also a writer & scientist · Comparable historical impact
Leonardo da Vinci
97Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath — painter, inventor, anatomist and engineer — whose curiosity and genius made him the archetype of the 'Renaissance man'.
Why Also a inventor & scientist · Comparable historical impact
Cicero
88Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator and philosopher whose speeches and writings defined Latin prose, transmitted Greek philosophy to Rome, and championed the values of the Roman Republic.
Why Also a statesman & writer · Comparable historical impact
Winston Churchill
90Winston Churchill was the British statesman who led the United Kingdom to victory in World War II — and a prolific historian and writer whose books and speeches won him the Nobel Prize in Literature, a rare honour for a man of action.
Why Also a statesman & writer · Comparable historical impact
Same Field or Discipline
Thomas Jefferson
88Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States, who was also a prolific writer, architect and scholar whose Notes on the State of Virginia was a landmark of early American letters.
Why Also a statesman & writer · Active in the same era
Carl Linnaeus
81Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish naturalist whose book Systema Naturae established the modern system for naming and classifying living things, earning him the title "father of taxonomy" and making him one of the most influential scientific authors in history.
Why Also a scientist & writer · Active in the same era
Carl Sagan
82Carl Sagan was an American astronomer and planetary scientist who became the world's most famous communicator of science, reaching millions through the television series Cosmos and best-selling books that made him a celebrated author as well as a researcher.
Why Also a scientist & writer · From the same civilization
Theodore Roosevelt
85Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, a soldier, conservationist and reformer — and a remarkably prolific author who wrote around forty books on history, nature, politics and exploration alongside his public career.
Why Also a statesman & writer · From the same civilization
Thomas Edison
88Thomas Edison was an American inventor and businessman whose innovations — including a practical electric light, the phonograph and systems for distributing electricity — helped create the modern industrial world.
Why Also a inventor · Worked in electricity
Archimedes
94Archimedes was an ancient Greek mathematician, physicist and inventor, widely regarded as the greatest mathematician of antiquity and a founder of mathematical physics and engineering.
Why Also a inventor · Worked in physics
Erwin Schrödinger
86Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist who formulated the wave equation governing quantum systems and devised the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment.
Why Also a scientist · Worked in physics
James Clerk Maxwell
92James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist whose equations unified electricity, magnetism and light into a single electromagnetic theory, one of the greatest achievements in the history of physics.
Why Also a scientist · Worked in physics
Max Planck
89Max Planck was a German physicist who originated quantum theory by introducing the quantum of action, a discovery that launched modern physics and earned him the 1918 Nobel Prize.
Why Also a scientist · Worked in physics
Michael Faraday
93Michael Faraday was an English scientist whose discoveries in electromagnetism and electrochemistry, above all electromagnetic induction, laid the experimental foundation of the electrical age.
Why Also a scientist · Worked in physics
Niels Bohr
90Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who created the first quantum model of the atom and became a leading architect of quantum mechanics through the Copenhagen interpretation.
Why Also a scientist · Worked in physics
Werner Heisenberg
87Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist who founded matrix mechanics and formulated the uncertainty principle, two of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics.
Why Also a scientist · Worked in physics
Abraham Lincoln
92Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, who led the nation through its Civil War, preserved the Union, and abolished slavery before his assassination in 1865.
Why Also a statesman · From the same civilization
Albert Einstein
99Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize.
Why Also a scientist · Worked in physics
Catherine II of Russia
87Catherine the Great was Empress of Russia for more than three decades, an enlightened despot who expanded the empire, modernized its administration, and made her court a brilliant centre of art and learning.
Why Also a statesman · Active in the same era