Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Andrés Laguna
Laguna was born in Segovia, according to Diego de Colmenares and other historians, to a converted Jewish doctor. He studied the arts for two years in Salamanca, then moved to Paris in 1530, where he graduated from the arts and went on to study medicine. He also learned classical languages such as Greek and Latin with such fluency as to be able to read Dioscorides in his original language. He was also influenced by Erasmus. Laguna returned to Spain in 1536, then travelled to England, lived some years in the Netherlands and collected herbal remedies in all the places he stayed to verify Dioscorides's prescriptions. Between 1540 and 1545 he resided in Metz, becoming a doctor of the city, and from 1545 to 1554 he stayed in Italy, where he received a doctorate from the University of Bologne and was honored by the Popes Paul III and Julius III, becoming doctor to the latter pontiff. He was provided with accommodations in Venice by the Spanish ambassador Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, a preeminent humanist and proprietor of a nutritional library. Laguna finally returned to Spain in 1557, after another extended stay in the Netherlands lasting three years; he served as doctor to Charles V and Philip II. Lastly, he created the Botanical Garden of Aranjuez. He died, probably in Guadalajara, Spain, in 1559. His remains were interred in the church of San Miguel, in Segovia.