He was smart, curious, a good talker with a penetrating gaze – and “willing to instruct any that were modest and respectfull to him” as John Aubrey wrote in his Brief Lives. A generous man, as long as you didn’t test his patience – since William Harvey was above all a hot-blooded type. He soon showed he knew a thing or two about blood, as he is credited with having discovered blood circulation. Harvey chose the University of Padua to further his medical studies, which he had started in England. His portrait as a brilliant international student is still among the 40 that grace the hall in front of the Aula Magna, where Galileo Galilei sometimes lectured. In this university, Harvey found the knowledge and the techniques he needed to develop his theories and experiments on blood circulation. He presented these in his 1628 work ‘Concerning the motion of the heart and blood’ (Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus) – the text which most of all ensured the… circulation of his discoveries!

Knowledge is freedom.