Dante (1265-1321)
Great Italian poet, author of the epic poem The Divine Comedy.

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
English physician and poet, gradnfather of Charles Darwin.

Samuel R. Delany (1942- )
American science fiction writer and critic, author of Babel 17, The Einstein Intersection, Dahlgren, Nova. Of Barfield, Delany has said the following: "Among that extraordinary group of English scholars, The Inklings, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were more famous in their time but none thought more rigorously and dearly about language and meaning than Owen Barfield. His intellectual performance is filled with luminous delights." 

Democritus (circa 460-c. 370 BC)
Greek philosopher and proponent of the atomic theory of the universe.

Jacques Derrida (1930-  )
Algerian-born French philosopher and critic, one of the key figures in the development of deconstruction. His books include Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), Speech and Phenomena (1973), Glas (1978), etc.

René Descartes (1596-1650)
French philosopher, the "father of modern philosophy," and author of Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations (1642). His Cartesian thought led to the development of philosophical dualism.

Charles Dickens (1812-70)
British novelist, author of such famous books as Bleak House, Hard Times, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist. and other works.

Dionysus the Areopagite (1st century A. D.)
"[M]ember of the Areopagus in Athens and convert to Christianity through the preaching of Saint Paul, as related in Acts 17:34. Nothing more is definitely known about him. . . . Throughout the Middle Ages a body of Greek writings that modern scholars identify as the work of a 6th-century Neoplatonist (known as the Pseudo-Dionysius) was ascribed to Dionysius. These writings include The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, works dealing respectively with the three triads of orders of angelic beings and with their earthly counterparts; The Divine Names, a treatise on what biblical appelations of the Deity can teach respecting his nature and attributes; and Mystic Theology, in which the author expounds a form of intuitive mysticism" [Microsoft Encarta 97 Encyclopedia. (1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation].

Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975)
Ukranian-American geneticist, who taught at  Columbia and Rockefeller universities, and wrote such books as Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937) and Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species (1962).

John Donne (1572-1631)
The greatest of the British "metaphysical" poets and a divine known for his eloquent sermons.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
French sociologist/anthropologist, most famous for his studies of labor and the book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Henry Victor Dyson (1896-1975)
An Inkling, professor, and friend of C. S. Lewis.