Poggio Bracciolini

Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, usually referred to simply as Poggio Bracciolini, was an Italian scholar and an early Renaissance humanist. He is noted for rediscovering and recovering many classical Latin manuscripts, mostly decaying and forgotten in German, Swiss, and French monastic libraries. His most celebrated finds are De rerum natura, the only surviving work by Lucretius, De architectura by Vitruvius, lost orations by Cicero such as Pro Sexto Roscio, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, Statius' Silvae, Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae, and Silius Italicus's Punica, as well as works by several minor authors such as Frontinus' De aquaeductu, Nonius Marcellus, Probus, Flavius Caper, and Eutyches.

11 February 1380

Born on the same birth day (11 February): Andreas Hilfiker • Callum Thorp • Carlo Carrà • Dennis Skinner • Didier Lockwood • Ellen Broe • Hans-Georg Gadamer • James Silas • John F. Fitzgerald • Joselito (singer) • Jōsei Toda • Mel Carnahan • Patrick Leigh Fermor • Rachilde • Rafael van der Vaart • Richard Hamming • Sheryl Crow