Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Fran
Portrait by Joseph Duplessis, 1785
An 1881 illustration of Franklin's birthplace on Milk Street in Boston
A May 2008 photograph of Franklin's birthplace in Boston, commemorated with a bust of Franklin atop the building's second-floor façade
La scuola della economia e della morale, an 1825 sketch of Franklin
Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declar
Portrait, c. 1800
The Wren Building at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where Jefferson studied in 1761 and 1762
Monticello, Jefferson's home near Charlottesville, Virginia
The Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson largely wrote in isolation between June 11 and 28, 1776, from a floor he was renting in a home at 700 Market Street in Center City Philadelphia, contain "the most potent and consequential words in American history," historian Joseph Ellis later wrote.