Francysk Skaryna

Francysk Skaryna was born circa 1490 in the ancient mercantile city of Polotsk in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (modern Belarus). After receiving his baccalaureate in liberal arts from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Skaryna earned his doctorate in medicine with supreme honors from the University of Padua in Italy in 1512.

In 1517 in Prague, Skaryna founded a printing press and printed the Psalter and 22 books of the Bible in the Old Belarusian vernacular, making scriptures accessible to ordinary people decades before printers in Moscow. He later set up the first printing house in Vilnius in 1522. Today, the Highest State Award of Belarus bears his name.