Famous People Born In 1714

Composer Christoph Willibald Gluck left home when his father went against his passion for music and pushed him into forestry. He then reached Milan, where he learned Italian instrumental music and later fused Italian and French opera music. His best-known works include Orfeo ed Euridice and La rencontre imprévue.

Prussian Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis had mastered theology and classical languages and also served as a pastor of Tolmingkehmen. His best-known work, Metai, or The Seasons, was penned in hexameters, a style never used before in Lithuanian verse. He had also written Lithuanian fables based on Aesop's Fables.

French astronomer and surveyor César-François Cassini de Thury followed in his father Jacques Cassini’s footsteps to create an authentic topographical map of France. His Carte de Cassini was the first map which charted an entire country based on its topography. He had also been the director of the Paris Observatory.

George Whitefield was an Anglican evangelist and cleric. He is credited with co-founding the evangelical movement and Methodism. Whitefield's teachings of a series of revivals in North America became an important component of the First Great Awakening. Thanks to his ability to captivate large audiences, George Whitefield preached to millions of listeners during his ministry.

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo was a Scottish philosopher, judge, deist, and scholar of linguistic evolution. Best remembered for contributing to the development of the concepts of biological evolution, James Burnett is often credited with theorizing the idea of natural selection. His theories were read and acknowledged by Erasmus Darwin, whose works were in turn read by his grandson Charles Darwin.

Apart from being a renowned astronomer, Alexander Wilson was also a qualified surgeon and once co-owned a type-founding business, too. He pioneered the use of kites in meteorological research and also co-founded the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has a lunar crater named after him.

British writer and botanist John Hill was the first to use the Linnaean nomenclature to pen a book on British plants. Initially an apothecary, he studied botany in his leisure time. He had also written several satirical articles for publications such as The London Advertiser, but his best-known work remains The Vegetable System.