Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer and polymath who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The work for which he is best known is his 42,733-entry Dictionary of the English Language (1755). For this and other contributions in and to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has called him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". September 18, 1709 – December 13, 1784; died at 75. Alive at the same time as Isaac Newton, Napoleon, Ludwig van Beethoven, Immanuel Kant, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Wiki link