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1713, Oct 51743-17821784, Jul 31
a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Diderot's literary reputation during his lifetime rested primarily on his plays and his contributions to the Encyclopédie; many of his most important works, including Jacques the Fatalist, Rameau's Nephew, Paradox of the Actor, and D'Alembert's Dream, were published only after his death.
 Timeline (1)
09/26/1771-Denis Diderot's Le Fils Naturel premieres in Paris
 Mentions (8)
Nicolas Beauzee
...one of the main contributors to the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert on the topic...
Charles-Pierre Colardeau
...as also seen in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot and Prévost. He also naturalized Ovid's term. Heroides,...
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
...music theorist. Until 1759 he was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie. D'Alembert's formula for...
Charles de Brosses
...philology and linguistics, some of which were used by Denis Diderot and D'Alembert in the Encyclopédie (1751-1765),...
Louis-Elisabeth de La Vergne de Tressan
...collaborated on volumes VI and VII of the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and D’Alembert.
Charles-Georges Le Roy
...the royal hunt and a friend of the encyclopedists Denis Diderot, d'Alembert and d'Holbach, regularly attending d'Holbach's...
Jacques-Andre Naigeon
...Encyclopédie and for reworking Baron d'Holbach's and Denis Diderot's manuscripts.
Song Yingxing
...weapons. Comparing him to the famous French encyclopedist Denis Diderot, the British sinologist and historian Joseph...
 Quotes (10) • View in Quotations
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.
You have to make it happen.
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Denis Diderot1713, Oct 51743
 
17821784, Jul 31

Charlotte-Catherine Patin1672 ca1683
 
17441744
 a 17th- and 18th-century French writer and art critic. Granddaughter of medical doctor and letter...
Jonathan Richardson1667, Jan 121715
 
17451745, May 28
 an English artist, collector of drawings, and writer on art, working almost entirely as a portrai...
John Potter1674 ca1737
 
17471747, Oct 10
 the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Church of England from 1737-1747. He was the son of a linen...
Gavril Stefanovic Venclovicunknown1680
 
1749unknown
 a Serbian priest, writer, poet, orator, philosopher, and illuminator. He was one of the first and...
Johann Heinrich Zedler1706, Jan 71727
 
17491751, Mar 21
 a bookseller and publisher. His most important achievement was the creation of a German encyclope...
Thomas Cannonunknown1740
 
1749unknown
 an English author of the 18th century. He wrote what may be the earliest published defence of hom...
William Barrowby16821718
 
17511758, Dec 30
 an English physician. Barrowby was born in London, the son of John Barrowby, a physician. He was ...
John Wood the Elder17041725
 
17541754, May 23
 an English architect, working mainly in Bath. In 1740 he surveyed Stonehenge and the Stanton Drew...
Henry Fielding1707, Apr 221728
 
17541754, Oct 8
 an English novelist and dramatist best known for his rich, earthy humour and satirical prowess, a...
Allan Ramsay [1]16861712
 
17551758
 a Scottish poet (or makar), playwright, publisher, librarian and wig-maker. As a pastoral writer ...
Aaron Hart16701692
 
17561756
 the first chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and the rabbi of the Great Synagogue of London from 1...
Simon Awad16831708
 
17561756, Feb 12
 the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch from 1743 to his death in 1756, remembered as an Arab writer. I...
Samuel Richardson1689, Aug 191706
 
17581761, Jul 4
 an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: ...
James Ralph17051724
 
17581762, Jan 24
 an American born English political writer, historian, reviewer, and Grub Street hack writer known...
Pope Benedict XIV1675, Mar 311740
 
17581758, May 3
 Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1740 until his death in1758. Perhaps one of the greatest s...
Alexander Volckunknown1740
 
1759unknown
 the city scribe for the Wetteravian town of Büdingen in Hesse, Germany during the mid 18th centu...
John Angellunknown1750
 
 
1759unknown
 an Irish professional shorthand writer. Angell was from Dublin, and professor of the art there. A...
Zhiyanzhai unknown1750
 
 
1759unknown
 the pseudonym of an early, mysterious commentator of the 18th-century Chinese novel Dream of t...
Francesco Vanneschiunknown1732
 
1760unknown
 an Italian opera manager, director and librettist. He was known as having been active as a libret...
Johann Georg Bergmuller1688, Apr 151702
 
17621762, Apr 2
 a painter, particularly of frescoes, of the Baroque. Bergmüller quickly acquired a high reputati...
Edward Young16811713
 
17621765
 an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts. Young is said to have been a brillian...
Richard Brookesunknown1721
 
1763unknown
 an English physician and author of compilations and translations on medicine, surgery, natural hi...
Ann Smith Franklin1696, Oct 21736
 
17631763, Apr 16
 an American colonial newspaper printer and publisher. She inherited the business from her husband...
Mikhail Lomonosov1711, Nov 81742
 
17641765, Apr 4
 a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, educati...
Firmin Abauzit1679, Nov 111698
 
17671767, Mar 20
 a French scholar who worked on physics, theology and philosophy, and served as librarian in Genev...
Laurence Sterne1713, Nov 241737
 
17681768, Mar 18
 an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opin...
Menonunknown1739
 
1768unknown
 the pseudonym of an 18th-century French cookbook author; his true identity is unknown. His numero...
Thomas Secker16931758
 
 
17681768, Aug 3
 the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England from 1758 until his death in 1768. In 1737 ...
Johann Joachim Quantz1697, Jan 301716
 
17691773, Jul 12
 a German flutist, flute maker and composer. He composed hundreds of flute sonatas and concertos, ...
William Storkunknown1750
 
 
17691768
 an oculist in England and the American colonies, and subsequently settled in the British colony o...
Pal Bajaiunknown1760
 
 
1769unknown
 a Hungarian Franciscan friar of the Observant reform and spiritual writer during the 18th century...
Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robertunknown1760
 
 
1769unknown
 an 18th-century French writer. Very little is known about her life. She wrote one of the earliest...
Gabrielle-Charlotte Patin16661680
 
177unknown
 a French numismatist, writer and painter during the 17th century. Granddaughter of medical doctor...
Enrique Florez1701, Feb 141716
 
17701773, Aug 20
 a Spanish historian. At 15 years old, he entered the order of St Augustine. He subsequently becam...
David Hume1711, Apr 261736
 
17711776, Aug 25
 a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highl...
Tobias Smollett1721, Mar 191748
 
 
17711771, Sep 17
 a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures o...
Walter Galeunknown1750
 
 
1771unknown
 the first schoolmaster of the Mayfield Charity School in Mayfield, East Sussex, now the Mayfield ...
Thomas Nugent1700 ca1749
 
 
17721772, Apr 27
 an erudite Irish historian and travel writer. Today he is known most of all for his travelogue of...
John Woolman1720, Oct 191755
 
 
17721772, Oct 7
 a North American merchant, tailor, journalist, and itinerant Quaker preacher, and an early abolit...
Juniusunknown1769
 
 
1772unknown
 the pseudonym of a writer who contributed a series of letters to the Public Advertiser, from 21 J...
James Ferguson [3]1710, Apr 251720
 
17731776, Nov 17
  a Scottish astronomer, instrument and globe maker. It is, as the inventor and improver of astron...
Oliver Goldsmith [1]1728, Nov 101756
 
 
17741774, Apr 4
 an Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712, Jun 281739
 
17761778, Jul 2
 a philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century. His political philosophy influenced the ...
Voltaire1694, Nov 211713
 
17781778, May 30
 a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the ...
Robert Rogers1731, Nov 71746
 
 
17791795, May 18
 an American colonial frontiersman. Rogers served in the British army during both the French and I...
Thomas Edwards [4]17291751
 
 
17791785
 an Anglican clergyman and divine. In 1759 Edwards published The Doctrine of Irresistible Grace pr...
George Andrewsunknown1770
 
 
1779unknown
 a barrister-at-law. Andrews published reports of cases argued in the court of King's Bench during...
M.D.T. Bienvilleunknown1770
 
 
1779unknown
 an obscure French doctor, he wrote the first full-length study abount nymphomania, entitled Nymph...
Sophia Briscoeunknown1770
 
 
1779unknown
 an 18th-century English novelist. Little is known of her life. Briscoe was the author of the epis...
Phillis Wheatley17531773
 
 
17791784
 the first published African-American female poet. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery ...
Constantin Christian Dedekind1628, Apr 21652
 
1781715
 a German poet, dramatist, librettist, composer and bass singer of the Baroque era. His 1657 songb...
Hemmou Talbunknown1760
 
 
1780unknown
 a Moroccan poet from the 18th century writing in Berber (Tashelhit). His nickname was bab n umarg...
Jose Francisco de Isla1703, Apr 241722
 
17811781, Nov 2
 a Spanish Jesuit, celebrated as a preacher and a humorist and satirist of the stamp of Miguel de ...
Samuel Johnson [2]1709, Sep 181744
 
 
17811784, Dec 13
 an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moral...
John Witherspoon1723, Feb 51745
 
 
17811794, Nov 15
  a Scots Presbyterian minister and a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence a...
Cesar-Francois Cassini de Thury1714, Jun 171735
 
17841784, Sep 4
 a French astronomer and cartographer. His chief works are: La méridienne de l’Observatoire ...
Henry Alline1748, Jun 141776
 
17841784, Feb 2
 minister, evangelist, and writer, who became known as "The Apostle of Nova Scotia". Born at Newpo...
Benjamin Calau17241743
 
17851785
 a German portrait painter, who used an encaustic technique. He painted some portraits for Johann ...
Patience Wright17251770
 
17851786, Mar 23
 the first recognized American-born sculptor. She chiefly created wax figures of people. She loved...
Rudjer Boscovich1711, May 181740
 
17861787, Feb 13
 a Ragusan physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, Jesuit p...
Carl Wilhelm Scheele1742, Dec 91757
 
17861786, May 21
 a Swedish Pomeranian and pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" bec...
Jupiter Hammon1711, Oct 171760
 
17861806 ca
 a black poet who in 1761 became the first African-American writer to be published in the present-...
Maurycy Beniowski1746, Sep 201762
 
17861786, May 23
 a Hungarian nobleman of Polish and Hungarian ancestry. He was an explorer, writer, the self-decla...
Robert Nugent17091739
 
17881788, Oct 13
 an Irish politician and poet. He was tersely described by Richard Glover as a jovial and voluptuo...
Edward Gibbon1737, May 81758
 
17881794, Jan 16
 an English historian, writer and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of th...
Benjamin Franklin1705, Jan 61718
 
17891790, Apr 17
 one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading aut...
Adam Smith1723, Jun 51748
 
17891790, Jul 17
 a Scottish economist, philosopher, and author. He was a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political...
Ethan Allen1737, Jan 101757
 
17891789, Feb 12
 a farmer, businessman, land speculator, philosopher, writer, lay theologian, and American Revolut...
Isaac Alexanderunknown1770
 
1789unknown
 a German author. He lived in South Germany in the second half of the 18th century, and wrote on p...
John Ledyard1751, Nov1770
 
17891789, Jan 10
 an American explorer and adventurer. In June 1776, Ledyard joined Captain James Cook's third and ...
Mohammed al-Haikunknown1780
 
1789unknown
 a Moroccan poet, musician and author of a songbook (el-kunash) comprising eleven nubas, that had ...
Abraham Brookunknown1780
 
1789unknown
 an English bookseller in Norwich, now remembered as an experimental physicist, working with elect...
Aaron ben Isaac of Rechnitzunknown1780
 
1789unknown
 the author of a midrashic commentary on the Bible, the first portion of which (Genesis) was publi...
James Bruce1730, Dec 141762
 
17901794, Apr 27
 a Scottish traveller and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethi...
Phebe Gibbesunknown1764
 
17901805
 an 18th-century English novelist and early feminist. She authored twenty-two books between 1764 a...
Robert Burns1759, Jan 251775
 
17901796, Jul 21
 a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celeb...
Francis Hopkinson1737, Sep 211761
 
17911791, May 9
 designed the first official American flag. He was an author, a composer, and one of the signers o...
Carl Michael Bellman1740, Feb 41768
 
17911795, Feb 11
 a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swe...
George Whatleyunknown1772
 
1791unknown
 a contemporary, friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin. He was also Vice-President (1772-1...
John Burgoyne1722, Feb 241743
 
17921792, Aug 4
 a British army officer, politician and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War...
George Mason1725, Nov 301747
 
17921792, Oct 7
 a Virginia planter and politician, and a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, ...
Henry Emlyn17291781
 
17951815, Dec 10
 an English architect. Emlyn published A Proposition for a new Order in Architecture, with rules f...
Sir William Chambers1723, Feb 231740
 
17961796, Mar 10
 a Scottish-Swedish architect, based in London. Among his best-known works are Somerset House, Lon...
Horace Walpole1717, Sep 241737
 
17971797, Mar 2
 an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill...
Giacomo Casanova1725, Apr 21742
 
17971798, Jun 4
 an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma v...
Benjamin Banneker1731, Nov 91753
 
17971806, Oct 9
 a free African American almanac author, surveyor, naturalist and farmer. His knowledge of astrono...
Ashley Bowen1728, Jan 81741
 
17991813
 the first American sailor to write an autobiography. Although Bowen's career as a sailor was not ...
John Andreeunknown1780
 
1799unknown
 an English surgeon. Andree published several books, chiefly on surgical subjects. Through not bei...
Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson1737, Feb 31764
 
18011801, Feb 23
 an American poet and writer; her main literary project was the translation of Telemachus from the...
Thomas Paine [2]1736, Jan 291761
 
18041809, Jun 8
 an English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary. One of...
Friedrich Schiller1759, Nov 101781
 
18041805, May 9
 a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years...
Mercy Otis Warren1728, Sep 141765
 
18051814, Oct 19
 a political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution. In the eighteenth century, topics...
Jacob Bailey1731, Apr 161755
 
18081808, Jul 26
 an author and clergyman of the Church of England, active in New England and Nova Scotia. Bailey w...
Xosefa Xovellanos1745, Jun 41740
 
18091807
 the younger sister of Asturian politician illustrated Gaspar Melchor de Xovellanos and prominent ...
Joseph Quesnel1746, Nov 151766
 
18091809, Jul 2/3
 a French Canadian composer, poet, and playwright. Among his works were two operas, Colas et Co...
William Batt1744, Jun 181770
 
18091812, Feb 9
 an English physician, chemist, and botanist. On completing his studies he returned to England, bu...
Jean-Dominique Cassini1748 Jun 301768
 
18101845, Oct 18
 a French astronomer, he succeeded his father as director of the observatory. He published in 177...
Louis Antoine de Bougainville1729, Nov 121753
 
18111811, Aug 31
 a French admiral and explorer. A contemporary of the British explorer James Cook, he took part in...
Paul Revere1734, Dec 211756
 
18111818, May 10
 an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and a Patriot in the American Revolution....
Joel Barlow1754, Mar 241778
 
18121812, Dec 26
 an American poet and diplomat, and French politician. In politics, he supported the French Revolu...
Shneur Zalman of Liadi1745, Sep 41780
 
18121812, Dec 15
 an Orthodox Rabbi, and the founder and first (Lubavitcher) Rebbe of Chabad (1780–1812), a branc...
Samuel Bard1742, Apr 11765
 
18131821, May 24
 an American physician who founded the first medical school in New York City and the second medica...
Samuel Osgood1747, Feb 31771
 
18131813, Aug 12
 an American merchant and statesman born in Andover, Massachusetts, currently a part of North Ando...
Alexander Cumming17331750
 
18141814, Mar 8
 a Scottish watchmaker and instrument inventor, who was the first to patent a design of the flush ...
David Ramsay1749, Apr 21773
 
18151815, May 8
 an American physician, public official, and historian from Charleston, South Carolina. He was one...
Friedrich Maximilian Klinger1752, Feb 171773
 
18171831, Feb 25
 a German dramatist and novelist. His play Sturm und Drang (1776) gave name to the Sturm und Drang...
Nathan Drake1766, Jan 151780
 
18171836
 an English essayist and physician. Drake was apprenticed to a doctor in York in 1780, and in 1786...
Jacob Axelsson Lindblom1746, Jul 271779
 
18191819, Feb 15
 a Swedish scholar who eventually became archbishop of Uppsala for the Lutheran Swedish Church, a ...
Henry Fuseli1741, Feb 71761
 
18201825, Apr 17
 a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain. Many of his...
Joaquim Machado de Castro1731, Jun 191770
 
18221822, Nov 17
 one of Portugal's foremost sculptors, and a celebrated figure throughout Europe in the eighteenth...
Thomas Jefferson1743, Apr 21767
 
18241826, Jul 4
 an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and ...
William Hull1753, Jun 241775
 
18251825, Nov 29
 an American soldier and politician. He fought in the American Revolution and was appointed as Gov...
Claude Henri de Rouvroy1760, Oct 171779
 
18251825, May 19
 a French political and economic theorist and businessperson whose thought played a substantial ro...
Pierre-Simon Laplace1749, Mar 231771
 
18271827, Mar 5
 an influential French scholar whose work was important to the development of mathematics, statist...
Franz Xaver von Zach1754, Jun 41780
 
18271832, Sep 2
 a Hungarian astronomer born in Pest, Hungary. Zach published Tables of the Sun (Gotha, 179...
Hannah Webster Foster1758, Sep 101770
 
18291840, Apr 17
 an American novelist. Her epistolary novel, The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton...
Jonathan Swift1667, Nov 301690
 
1831745, Oct 19
 an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Torie...
Richard Allen [2]1760, Feb 141777
 
18311831, Mar 26
 a minister, educator, writer, and one of America's most active and influential black leaders. In ...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749, Aug 281770
 
18321832, Mar 22
 a German writer and statesman. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a varie...
Edmund Fanning [2]1769, Jul 161773
 
18411841, Apr 23
 an American explorer and sea captain, known as the "Pathfinder of the Pacific." As master of the ...
Noah Webster1758, Oct 161781
 
18431843, May 28
 an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer...
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