author
William Harvey
1578–1657
Best known for showing how blood circulates through the body, this English physician helped change medicine from inherited theory to careful experiment. His work on the heart became one of the landmarks of early modern science.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Folkestone, Kent, on April 1, 1578, he studied at the University of Cambridge and then at Padua, one of Europe’s leading medical schools. He later built a distinguished career in London as a physician and also served the English kings James I and Charles I.
His lasting fame comes from De Motu Cordis (1628), the book in which he set out his arguments that the heart acts as a pump and that blood moves in a continuous circulation through the body. That idea overturned older medical teaching and became a foundation of modern physiology.
He died on June 3, 1657. Even centuries later, he is remembered not only for a major discovery, but for the clear, experimental way he pursued it.