It is difficult to speak about Jewish involvement in the medicine and science during the Renaissance and beyond without reference to Jewish traditions of medical and scientific activity in the ancient and medieval periods. Perceiving themselves as proud heirs of such medieval luminaries as the physician Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the astrologer Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164), and the astronomer Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides; 1288-1344), as well as the biblical Abraham, Solomon, and the ancient rabbis, Jewish thinkers living in early modern Europe continued to believe that the study of nature was a supreme religious ideal and that the roots of magic and medicine, astrology and astronomy, were ultimately located in ancient Jewish sources.