Denis Diderot

Diderot studied philosophy with the Jesuits, flirted with the clergy, then told his father in 1734 he'd be a writer instead — and was promptly disowned. He spent the next decade scraping by, producing fiction and essays in the 1740s, including the novel Les Bijoux indiscrets. In 1751 he and Jean le Rond d'Alembert launched the Encyclopédie, the first encyclopedia to credit contributors by name and chronicle the mechanical arts; its secular skepticism about Biblical miracles enraged the Church, which banned it in 1758, then the French crown a year later. Contributors scattered, some jailed. D'A…