Christopher Wren

Astronomer and Oxford professor of mathematics before turning to architecture in his thirties — a turn enabled by the Great Fire of London (1666), which left 87 City churches in need of rebuilding.

Designed 51 of those rebuilt churches and presided over the building of St Paul's Cathedral (1675–1710), whose triple-shell dome adapted Renaissance and Baroque models to British taste.

Wren's blend of Continental Baroque with English restraint defined English ecclesiastical architecture for two centuries. Buried in St Paul's, his epitaph reads *Si monumentum requiris, circumspice* — "If you seek his monument, look around you."