Rodolphus Agricola (1443-1485), Dutch humanist scholar. Agricola was born Roelof Huusman near Groningen and was eductade there at at Louvain. He was especially gifted in translating Latin and was one of the first northern European scholars to have a good understanding of Greek. He travelled widely through Italy, meeting the most influential humanist thinkers of the time. In 1470 he taught a deaf child to communicate through speech and in writing. He described this in his great work, De inventione dialectica, which goes on to define a proper place for logic in rhetorical studies and that all ideas need to be treated with a rigorous and critical dialectic process. This work was to be a major influence on Renaissance humanists. This woodcut is from van Opmeer's Opus chronologicum orbis universi, published at Antwerp in 1611.