Paula Findlen is Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History at Stanford University, USA. She is the author of Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (1994) and many other publications on Renaissance / early modern Italy and the history of science. Professor Findlen is the 2016 recipient of the Premio Galileo for her contributions to understanding Italian culture. Suzanne Sutherland is an Assistant Professor of Early Modern European History at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. She is finishing a book on early modern military entrepreneurs and has worked on Stanford’s Mapping the Republic of Letters interdisciplinary digital humanities project since 2008.