Edward Emily Gibbon (1737-1794) studied at the Westminster School and at Magdalen College in Oxford. In 1763 he traveled to Paris, where he studied Diderot and D'Alembert, and then to Rome to see the ruins of the Empire in situ. In 1770 he returned to London and published his capital work, Decadence and Fall of the Roman Empire. This vast study has made him the most important British historian beyond his time.