Cyrano de Bergerac

Name at birth: Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac

De Bergerac was a real person but is still better known as the hero of Edmond Rostand's 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand depicts Cyrano as a brilliant and charming soldier whose love life is hampered by his extra-large nose. Eventually Cyrano provides a handsome fellow soldier, Christian, with the words to woo Roxane, the beauty they both love. In real life de Bergerac was at first a soldier (and like his literary counterpart, an expert swordsman and duellist). Later he became a student of the philosopher Pierre Gassendi and then the author of fiction and political satire. His whimsical stories of travel to the moon and the sun made him a forerunner of sci-fi authors like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Arthur C. Clarke.