{\b Francis Bacon}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 22 January 1561 

{\b Date of Death}.: 9 April 1626

{\b Works}.

English statesman and philosopher. Bacon saw his works as part of a systematic 
six part study of science and nature called the Great Instauration,of which 
the first two parts were The Advancement of Learning (1605, with an extended 
Latin version in 1623) and the Novum Organum (1620), though plans for the 
others exist. Other works failed to fit into his scheme, notably his utopian 
New Atlantis (1627) and various Essays (from 1597 to 1625).

 Bacon's classification of knowledge provided a model for all subsequent 
projects of its kind, for example the work of the eighteenth century 
encyclopaedists.

{\b Featured Works}.

'The World's a Bubble'.

{\b General Comment}.

Bacon's father held public office as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in Queen 
Elizabeth's reign, and his mother, Anne Cooke, was a puritan. Bacon was 
educated at Cambridge and trained as a barrister; he then became an Member of 
Parliament, serving various constituencies between 1584 and 1614. 
From 1591 Bacon's career was aided by the patronage of the Earl of Essex, but 
in 1601 Bacon took part in the treason trial against Essex, drafting the 
original official report. Under the reign of James I, he fulfilled a variety 
of increasingly important public posts, including Attorney General (1613-17), 
Privy Councillor (1616) and eventually Lord Chancellor (1618). Shortly 
afterwards he was accused of bribery and, having made a general confession of 
guilt, was stripped of his offices and status, though he was later pardoned by 
the king.

 Bacon gave great stimulus to scientific enquiry with his philosophies based 
on firm observations about the natural world. However, his only known 
experiment was to prove fatal: he stuffed a chicken with snow to see if this 
would halt decay, caught a chill and died.