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SUMMARY: Rene Descartes (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650) French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, writer
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Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician of considerable powers, but his talents went further than that. Rene Descartes is to modern philosophy what Plato is to ancient philosophy, and what Aquinas is to the philosophy of the middle ages—that is, its founding father. From his youth, Descartes was obsessed with math and science. It dominated him; he would rather think about math and science than play outside. He would rather think about math and science than play soldier with the neighbor boys—for Descartes was unusual and talented indeed. He would rather think about math and science than play soldier with the neighbor boys, but when he came to manhood he actually joined the Dutch army—in order to have more time to think, he said! And think he did. He traveled around Europe thinking; he fathered a child, a daughter, who died very young, and broke his heart. He returned to France and devoted himself to philosophy. He began writing books in secret.

Descartes, more than anything else, was interested in unifying science into one great organized schemata, into a system; he wanted to impose order on the disunity of science. But to do that, he must find some grounding principle first. Descartes is the founding father of modern philosophy because he was the first to create a system—a philosophical system, that is, a system that encompassed all areas of knowledge and wisdom, including math and science, including even theology—in the modern style. The modern style of creating philosophical systems is to do it on your own.

In ancient philosophy, but especially in the philosophy of the middle ages, the system, while filled with enormous, important personalities to be sure, was nevertheless more like a web cast out, out, out across the west and deeply into the east. (We owe our Aristotelian inheritance largely thanks to the astonishing efforts of medieval Islamic philosophers, for example, who preserved and handed down Aristotle’s texts when they had been all but lost to their native lands.) I.e., it was “the” system, not “a” system. You had enormous personalities to be sure, but still they were joined together as it were with a web, with each building on the efforts of each, or at least borrowing heavily from one another; ancient and medieval philosophy have very much a family feel to them, while modern philosophy is about renegades, lone wolves.

Modern philosophy is the story of lone wolves creating philosophical systems, seemingly, out of nothing; when you think of modern philosophers, you think of them singly—Descartes, Hegel, Kant, Newton, Pascal, James, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein—you think of these lonely figures spinning out webs of systems, but in the privacy of their library. Of course, modern philosophers relied heavily on the past and on each other. Still, though, it can’t be denied that modern philosophy (as well as much of modernity in general) has a certain loneliness to it. Descartes wanted to build a system that would unify philosophy, and said that he must first have a groundwork, a foundation. His essential question was, what can I build my system on? What am I sure of enough that I can construct an entire philosophical system on it?

Well, everyone, probably, has heard the famous summation of the answer to this question—when at last it came. “I think, therefore I am”—that’s Rene Descartes! He set out and ruthlessly began to doubt everything he was certain of; everything. Love, the natural world, the body—he doubted it all. And he found, in the end, that what he was left with was—his mind. His mind was the one thing he knew, the one thing he controlled with almost absolute power; he couldn’t helpt getting a toothache, he couldn’t helpt it if his knees ached! But his mind, there was the seat of power. And he proceeded to build his system from there, a system, to be sure, that would be knocked about and shaken and tried and examined from every angle in his day, just as it is in our own. Probably today it wouldn’t be a good idea to join the army for a little peace and quiet, for a little thinking time. But perhaps next time you hear or read “I think, therefore I am”—perhaps you’ll think of Descartes in his handsome Dutch uniform, and you’ll know that you are. That is, you’ll know you exist, because you’re thinking! Three cheers!

SUMMARY: Ray Bradbury ( August 22, 1920) American author, playwright
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Ray Bradbury was born in 1920, and the next day he went out and got a library card. Of course, that’s a slightly exaggerated account. He was drawn to books at an age when other boys are drawn to mud pies, though. He was a reader from the beginning. All the librarians in his hometown of Waukegan, Illinois new him on a first-name basis. “Hi, Ray. Back already?” etc. He was one of these figures such as Matilda in Roald Dahl’s book of the same name. Very precocious—though without the gift of ESP. Nevertheless, paranormal activities such as ESP did interest him very much back then, and continued to interest him as got older, and older, and older, so that he’s probably working hard on a short story or novel featuring the paranormal as you read this!

Actually, there’s a story about how Ray Bradbury became a writer himself that might amuse you. It’s a true one; and a little bizarre; and so very, very appropriate. (For Ray Bradbury.) One day in 1932 twelve-year-old Bradbury went to a nearby carnival. Carnivals, as everyone knows, are weird, mysterious events. One of Bradbury’s most famous books is about a carnival. Well—as Bradbury walked around, he noticed an eccentric-looking figure making quite a scene of it there in the carnival grounds. He looked like a mad wizard, or something. He had this shimmery suit on, sunlight reflected off him in these shimmery, blinding ripples. Bradbury was intrigued. Just who was this shimmery, wild-looking, voluble man!

Well, it was Mr. Electrico. He was attached to the carnival. Mr. Electrico was Bradbury’s original wizard, like Merlin was King Arthur’s. Mr. Electrico could perform amazing feats with, you guessed it, electricity. And this is what he did to Bradbury. He preformed a feat on Bradbury, either intuitively or randomly sensing that Bradbury, of all the crowd, was the person requiring a feat. What happened, apparently, was that he suddenly lunged at Bradbury with an electrified sword—Bradbury couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe!—Mr. Electrico lunged out with this terrible blazing sword but at the last second checked himself and very delicately touched Bradbury’s shoulder with the tip of the blade, at the same time shouting “Live forever!” in a commanding and terrible voice.

Electricity went down and up Bradbury as if his veins had become wires. Each and every one of his hairs stood straight up. The crowd laughed. Mr. Electrico forgot Bradbury entirely and went on with his act. But starting the next morning, and every morning since then, without fail, including this morning, Bradbury wrote part of a story.

Strange? Yes—this isn’t at all the typical way that authors begin writing. You can safely say that being zapped with an electrified sword by a partially insane carnival performer doesn’t feature in the early chapters of most writers’ biographies. However—whatever. Whatever works! Bradbury’s output has been enormous. He’s written hundreds of tales, dozens of novels; he’s created universe! There’s no mistaking a Bradbury story, there’s no mistaking the Bradbury style. There are thousands of science fiction writers in existence, and lots of them are good at what they do, but Bradbury—with Bradbury you’ve got a different thing, he’s separated out. He’s a live, fleshy, breathing and aging man, but he’s also a literature; he’s become a literature.

Very few writers become their own literature, so that when you read a single sentence from them you think of them as much as the sentence, and there’s no explaining it when it happens. It’s true that such writers have things in common, such as they read a lot, they wrote a lot, they weren’t your average personality, etc. But this can be said of a million published writers, who, if they aren’t unknown, haven’t managed to become so completely themselves, so completely and authentically “their own style,” that their books are completely themselves. So, all you can do is read the books and learn about these very exceptional writers (for added pleasure). For instance, read Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and then read the account of how, as a very young, very poor father, he tapped it out after work, at about the rate of one page per night, on an primeval typewriter in the basement of his—you guessed it again!—local library.

SUMMARY: Galileo (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher
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Galileo Galilei, one of the world’s most renowned and famous scientists, was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. His father was Vincenzo Galilei, who died in 1591, wished for Galileo to go to medical school, and so Galileo went to the University of Pisa to study medicine in 1581. However, Galileo was actually more interested in math and science than in medicine, and he ended up studying math instead. In 1589 Galileo received a job from the University as the head of the math department. It was during this time that he proved that objects fell at the same speed, no matter how heavy they are. He would work at the University of Pisa until 1592 when he would switch to the University of Padua where he would also become a professor of mathematics, and work there for about 18 years.

While at the University of Padua, Galileo had three children between the years 1600 to 1606 with a woman named Marina Gamba, although they were never officially married. His two oldest children became nuns, but his youngest son was able to get married. Some suppose that this is because there was a dowry required for daughters, which Galileo was not able to pay, and since Galileo came from nobility, and his daughters were considered to be illegitimate, he didn’t feel that he would be able to get them married, and so they went into the convent.

During Galileo’s 18 years at the University of Padua, Galileo accomplished much scientific and technological advancement. He would explore his love for mechanical things. He loved to visit the shipyard and explore mechanical devices that could benefit the naval industry. He worked on an improved a precision compass, which was more precise than previous versions. He invented a pump during this time as well. He also continued to be interested in physics, continuing the work of his predecessors. He formulated the correct mathematical expression for acceleration.

One of the things for which he is famous is improving the telescope. He was able to see planets, their moons, the moon and the sun up to 20 times as close as previous telescopes. With this tool, his interest and study of astronomy, he proved that Nicolas Copernicus was correct about the earth not being the center of the universe, or even the solar system. He was able to show that the sun is actually the center of the solar system and that the other planets orbit the sun.

In 1613, Marina Gamba, the mother of Galileo’s children, married another man, but remained friends with Galileo.

Because of Galileo’s insistence that the earth rotated around the sun, Galileo got in trouble with the Catholic inquisition. The inquisition was an organization in the church responsible getting rid of heresies. He was warned in 1624 that he could write about the sun being the center of the solar system only as a mathematical idea, and not as a fact. It was the belief of the Catholic Church at that time that the earth was the center of the universe. However, after Galileo’s book on the subject was published, he had to defend himself in front of the inquisition. Galileo was found guilty of heresy and would remain under house arrest for the remainder of his life. In 1638, he was allowed to move to his home in Florence where he lived out his life until he died in 1642.

SUMMARY: Fyodor Dostoevsky (November 11 1821–February 9 1881) Russian novelist
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Fyodor Dostoevsky a Russian novelist and short story writer was born on October 30, 1821 at the Marinsky Hospital for the poor in Moscow where his father Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky worked as a doctor. His mother was Maria Fyodorovna Nechaeva, the daughter of a wealthy Moscow merchant. Fyodor was the second son of seven children. He received a private education at home and at a private school. He grew up in an oppressive middle-class family in Moscow. His mother was very gentle and loving but his father on the other hand, was known to be a stingy and authoritative man as well as the main disciplinarian in the family. It was also speculated that after his father retired to his estate in the village of Darovoye situated in the district of Kashir, province of Tula, he was murdered by his own slaves due to his awful temper and fearful state of mind.

Fyodor Dostoevsky lived much of his childhood being reserved and alienated from his father, mother and family. Regardless of his relationship with his parents, he grew closer to his elder brother Mikhail. The two brothers joined the semi-boarding school of Drashusov in January of 1833 where they took different courses but never failed to meet for lunch every day. A year later in 1834, both Fyodor and Mikhail entered the Moscow private boarding school of Leonty Ivanovich Chermak. In 1837, Fyodor’s mother passed away just before he turned 16. After her death, Fyodor and his brother Mikhail decided to escape the tyrant atmosphere of his father’s household. They moved to Petersburg where they first entered the preparatory boarding school of Captain K.F. Kostmarov. Later on around 1838, Fyodor entered the Academy of Military Engineering while his brother Mikhail moved to Revel to join an Engineering detachment.

Fyodor graduated from the Academy of Military Engineering as a lieutenant but soon realized that working in the military gave him no profound satisfaction. He found that he would rather become an author and started devoting himself to writing. His writing career started as a translator. He translated Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet in 1843 and George Sand’s La Derniere Aldini in 1844. While working on the two translations, he also started writing his first novel called “Poor Folk”. Before its publication in 1846, Fyodor’s name became known in the Petersburg literary circles. In 1848, he began attending a group of young intellectuals to discuss political and literary matters. This type of group was not permitted at the time in Russia so in 1849, they were caught, imprisoned and sentenced to death. As they waited for the firing squad to proceed with the sentence, a miracle happened. Their lives were spared. The Czar announced the reducing of their sentence from death to hard labor in Siberia. He spent four years in hard labor in Siberia penitentiary and was released in 1858. While he was serving his sentence in the prison of Siberia, he became a soldier, a monarchist and a faithful follower of the Russian Orthodox Church.

He married his first wife the widowed Maria Dimitrievna Isaeva in the town of Kuznetsk in 1857. By an imperial decree, he regained his hereditary as a nobleman. In 1858, he was released from his military service and he returned to Petersburg where he started writing again. He published some of his popular novels called “The House of the Dead” 1862, “Notes from Underground” 1864, “Crime and Punishment” 1866, “The Idiot” 1868 and “Devils” 1971 which most of them describes his painful experiences in Siberia’s prison. In 1862, while visiting Europe, he started having an affair with a young college student Apollinaria Suslova while still married to his wife Dimitrievna. He later asked Apollineria to marry him but unfortunately, she declined. His wife Dimitrievna died in 1864 followed by his brother Mikhail. Now, he was left with no one to love and his brother’s debts up to his ears. This resulted in heavy gambling as a quick fix for his financial problems. He married his second wife Grigorievna Snitkina in February 15, 1867. They met when he desperately needed help with his novel called “The Gambler”. Together, they had 3 children. He died in January 29, 1881 in St. Petersburg.

SUMMARY: Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) American architect
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Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, a genius in the originality of his work and was considered one of the greatest figures in 20th century architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright was originally named Frank Lincoln Wright and later changed his middle name from Lincoln to Lloyd after his parents’ divorce.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born June 8, 1867 in Richland Center in southwestern Wisconsin to William Cary Wright a music teacher and a Baptist minister and Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher. Growing up, Frank’s mother would post pictures of large and beautiful buildings in his room’s walls with the intent of inspiring him from the earliest time of his life to become an architect. At age 10, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin where his father taught music lessons and became the secretary of the newly formed Unitarian Church. Unable to consistently provide for his family, his mother asked for a divorce which was finalized in 1885. Frank’s father left Wisconsin after the divorce to never again be seen by his wife or children.

Frank Lloyd Wright attended Madison High School and later took classes for a couple of semesters including drafting at the University of Wisconsin. He was offered a job while attending the University of Wisconsin working for Allan D. Conover, a local professor of civil engineering. In 1887, he decided to leave school and take the next train to Chicago. He quickly found a job working in the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee as a tracer for about eight dollars a week. He worked for Joseph Lyman Silsbee’s for a period of a year before he decided to take a better paying drafting job working for the firm of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Alder helping with the new design of the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. Frank often referred to Sullivan as his “beloved Master” and considered him to be the only architect who made an impact in his future work. Once Sullivan discovered that Frank was designing houses without his knowledge and was accepting independent commissions, feeling betrayed he soon fired him.

In 1889, he met and married his first of three wives Catherine Lee Clark Tobin the daughter of a wealthy businessman. He bought a lot in Oak Park, Illinois and built his first home. Frank and Catherine raised six children together in the house that went through so many changes and additions to accommodate the needs of his growing family, and more importantly, to develop his Prairie style of architecture.

Frank opened up an architectural office in downtown Chicago after he was fired from Sullivan and Dankmar. In 1894 he relocated his firm to the 11th floor of the Steinway Piano Company building, where others interested in starting the Prairie School of Architecture soon joined him. This arrangement only lasted for four years when he decided to add a studio onto his home in Oak Park to establish his own practice.

In 1903, Frank designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park and soon fell in love with his client’s wife Margaret or “Mamah” Borthwick Cheney regardless of his 20 years of marriage to his wife Catherine. Catherine refused to grant Frank a divorce so in 1909, Frank and Mamah flew secretly to Europe allowing them a chance to deepen their relationship. They lived in Europe for a period of two years before returning to the U.S.

Shortly after his return to the U.S., Frank closed his Oak Park studio to start a new firm in Chicago. He also built a house that he called Taliesin for himself and Mamah Cheney located in Spring Green, on a property that his mother purchased for him. On August 15, 1914 while Frank was working on an important project in Chicago, a recently hired male worker, Julian Carleton set his Taliesin home on fire after killing Mamah, her two children and four other workers with an axe. Devastated, Frank decided to bury himself in his work. Following the incident at Taliesin, Frank met Miriam Noel a self-proclaimed sculptor. He decided to rebuild his Taliesin home and married Miriam Noel in November 1923. Her addiction to morphine soon dissolved the marriage. Frank met Olga Milanoff Hinzenberg and asked her to move in with him. Three years later after the birth of their daughter, he and Olga were married.

Frank passed away on April 9th 1949. He has left a rich heritage of unique and magnificent buildings. He is one the most recognizable architects of all time.

SUMMARY: F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) American novelist.
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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was named after the author of the United States’ National Anthem “The Star Spangled Banner”. He was born into a Catholic upper-middle class family in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24, 1896. He was the only son of Edward Fitzgerald and Mary Mollie McQuillan. He had one sister, Annabel, born in 1901. His father Edward tried to start his own business as a manufacturer of wicker furniture in St. Paul, but it didn’t succeed. He then moved the family to Buffalo, in upstate New York where he worked for Procter and Gamble as a salesman. In 1908, he was let go by the company. He moved his family back to St. Paul and with the large inheritance that his wife Mollie received, the family was able to live comfortably.

F. Scott Fitzgerald discovered his passion about writing at an early age. While attending High School, he published some of his detective stories in the school newspapers. In September of 1913, he began his education at Princeton University. He quickly found his place with the triangle club, which puts together a musical every year. He started neglecting his classes focussing more his attention on his writing and in the production of the musical. As a result, his grades suffered and soon he dropped out of Princeton University to join the U.S. army in October of 1917. While serving in the army, he continued writing articles for magazines as well as musical lyrics. At age 21, he submitted his first novel to be published but this was quickly turned down. With perseverance and determination, he again worked on a novel called “The Romantic Egoist” and resubmitted it to be published but again it was rejected. He then stop writing books for a while and turned his attention to advertising in order to support himself.

While stationed in Alabama in 1918 near Montgomery, he met a beautiful 18 year old young woman named Zelda Sayre. He immediately fell in love with her. They were engaged in 1919 after the war ended. Unfortunately his income from advertising didn’t satisfy his bride to be. She grew tired of waiting for him to make his fortune in the field of advertising and eventually called off the engagement. She insisted that he become a successful person first before she could marry him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald decided to return to his hometown in St. Paul Minnesota where he spent the time to rewrite a novel called “This Side of the Paradise”. This would be his third attempt to have the novel published and this time it was a success. In March of 1921, the book was published and F. Scott Fitzgerald became rich and famous. He then married his sweetheart Zelda in April of 1921 soon after the publication of his novel. She became a great influence on his writing, contributing much of the facts for his novels and short stories by his quoting her and using her words as the voice for many of his female characters. The family enjoyed fame and fortune and his novels reflected much of their lifestyle, describing the privilege of being wealthy.

The Fitzgeralds decided to move to France and make a home there. They frequently travelled to Rome, Switzerland and throughout the United States. Three years after the birth of their daughter, Scott decided to write another novel called “The Great Gatsby”. This was his best known work. Their exorbitant way of living soon took its toll on the couple. They both began to drink heavily and Zelda experienced several mental breakdowns. She was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent most of her life in and out of the hospital and finally in 1926, she was admitted in Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina where she resided for the rest of her life.

Now desperately in debt, unable to write a novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald found work in Hollywood as a scriptwriter. In Hollywood, he fell in love with Sheilah Graham, a movie columnist. Their relationship lasted until his death at age 44 in 1940.

SUMMARY: B. F. Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990 American psychologist

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B. F. Skinner was born on March 20, 1904. He was born in the town or Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. His father was one of the best lawyers there were at the time. His mother was a strong and intelligent housewife.

She could cook the best food ever, in B.F. Skinner’s opinion. Both of his parents were old-fashioned hard working people. His parents were very strict they wanted him to succeed, and they were consistent.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was his full birth name but later in life he chose to go by a simpler version of his name. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a loving out going boy who was very affectionate. He also loved the outdoors, and he loved to take things apart and build them over again. He also loved to go to school and make friends.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner received his BA in English when he was in college. He attended collage at Hamilton college in upstate New York. In college he was kind of a outcast, he didn’t fit in very well.

He never attended the fraternity parties of the football games, and didn’t have many friends or very many acquaintances except the professors. This made him more focused on his goals. He would write the school paper with his spare time.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner believed in the atheist religion by choice. This was very wired in his case because he went to a college that required a class of chapel attendance every day. He had learned about other religion but he wasn’t sure what to believe.

He wanted to be a writer ever since he started writing for the school paper. He tried to get some jobs as a writer by sending in poetry and short stories to people who had ads in the paper but no one hired him.

After Skinner graduated he tried to use his parents’ attic as an office and a place to concentrate. This wasn’t the best place for him to work but it was all that he had. After a wile he realized that it just wouldn’t work for him.

The only work he could find was a newspaper writer. He wrote things mostly about labor problems. Not his choice but he got to do what he loved, so he bargained. He lived for a while in Greenwich Village in New York City as a bohemian.

After Frederic Skinner finished doing some traveling and decided to settle down he decided that now would be the best time to finish school so that he didn’t give up forever and lose the opportunity.

This time Frederic decided to try a different school that he might have a better chance at, so he decided to go to Harvard. Harvard was the best school in the area and close enough that he could walk if he needed to.

In 1930 Burrhus Frederic Skinner got his masters degree in psychology. Than he decided to go on to get his doctorate degree, and he finished with that in 1931. After he finished both the doctorate and psychology degrees he stayed on campus to do research until 1936.

After he finished studying he decided to move to Minneapolis, there he became a professor at the University in Minnesota. There he met a woman and got married. His wife was a young pretty woman by the name of Yvonne Blue.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner and his new wife had two beautiful daughters. Skinner soon became a professor at Harvard and he remained there for the rest of his life where he could do his research and teach. He had a very fulfilling life.

Skinner in a nut shell was a highly influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform and poet.

He taught psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and founded his own school of experimental research psychology – the experimental analysis of behavior.

His works are still used and applied today, and he is considered one of most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

He was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles, both about psychology and other subjects.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a very good teacher who had a great and smart mind, and he should be remembered for that.

SUMMARY: Euripides (ca. 480 BC–406 BCE) Greek playright
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Euripides was born between the year of 480 and 485 BC from a wealthy family on the island of Salamis. He was one of Athens greatest classical and tragic writers and poets. He lived the life of a student in the standard Greek methods studying philosophy under Anaxagoras then later with Socrates. However, he was not listed as one of the highest philosophers of his time like Socrates and such. He spent a lot of his time alone outside of Athens. His works were quite popular around his era. Even Socrates, the most famous philosopher of all time enjoyed going to the theatre if a play of Euripides was performed. Euripides started submitting and producing his plays to several competitions. His first play won him a third place prize and four more of his works helped him win first place, and that’s all he won during his entire writing career. Sophocles holds the record with 18 first place awards. He wrote over 90 plays in his lifetime and some of them were about women and mythological themes like “Medea” and “Helen of Troy”.

Euripides ideas and philosophy were often misunderstood and became frequently the object of criticism by Athenian writers of comedy. They repeatedly criticized the bizarreness of his plays simply because he used everyday words for the main characters’ dialogue. Regardless of negative comments and views of his colleagues, his plays gradually became well known and famous throughout Greece. In 409 BC, Euripides decided to leave Athens for the court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia where he spent the remaining of his life until his death in 406 BC. The entire city of Athens was devastated to hear about the death of Euripides and mourned his death. Sophocles had his actors wore mourning clothes during their performance on stage or even in the street to show respect to their most profound writer Euripides. The city of Athens demanded for the body of Euripides for a memorial service and burial. Unfortunately, the Macedonians declined the request. Upon this, the city decided to build an honorable tomb in memory of Euripides on the road to Piraeus with the inscription saying: “All Greece is the monument of Euripides. Macedonian earth covers but his bones”. Another magnificent monument was built by Archelaus in memory of Euripides and it said: “Never, O Euripides, will thy memory be forgotten”. Euripides was buried at Arethusa in Macedonia

The death of Euripides helped his popularity and his plays were often chosen on stage than those of his rivals Sophocles or Eschylus. The French classicists later idolized his work. The comic poet Aristophanes recognizes the greatness of Euripides and often shows it in his plays.

In 1997, archaeologists discovered what they believed to be one of the caves where Euripides often used for some of the inspiration for his writings. They found objects like a pot in the cave with inscription of the first six letters of Euripides’ name. The archaeologists believe that Euripides’ fans added the inscription on the pot later.
Euripides is considered by many to be the founder of the modern European dramatic sensibility and his writings have become a benchmark for several of the most important western writers.