The names of seventeenth century science and philosophy are well known to most:Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Descartes amongst others. But these men were men of their times. We know this because we know that men that are well ahead of their time are typically ignored. These men's work was very sophisticated yet found a ready audience. Europe had been prepared for their works through societal and institutional changes that spanned centuries. One of these key institutions, the university, had developed over the centuries but maintained many of the structures and procedures that the church had formalized in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The timeline and map (also known as a timemap) below shows the medieval European and American Universities established before 1600. Some of the information has come from Wikipedia:List of Medieval Universities.