The New Student's Reference Work/Bacon, Roger

Ba′con, Roger (1214–94), was an English monk and scientist. He studied at Oxford and Paris, became a Franciscan monk about 1250, and devoted himself to science. He made discoveries that ignorant people considered magic. So he was imprisoned twenty years, with one brief space of freedom. He wrote a Latin book, called Opus Majus, giving a comprehensive view of the progress of human knowledge. He invented or improved the telescope. As a scientific discoverer he was centuries ahead of his age.