Roger Bacon

Wrote the recipe for gunpowder in code — and spent his last decades chasing the elixir of life.

Bacon's Opus Majus, written for Pope Clement IV, argued for mathematics, experiment, and direct observation four centuries before Galileo — and described a working gunpowder formula encoded in an anagram. His optics anticipated lenses and corrective eyeglasses. The same body of work also pursued the philosopher's stone and an alchemical elixir vitae he believed could extend life to 1000 years. The empirical program got passed down. The elixir program quietly died with him.