Emerson, Ralph Waldo: - Born in 1803, RALPH WALDO EMERSON became one of the founders of the transcendentalist movement and one of America's most beloved thinkers. His 1836 essay, "Nature" became a key exploration of the ideas of transcendentalism that would inform the work of contemporaries like Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Throughout his life, Emerson wrote essays and poems and delivered numerous lectures developing his ideas and critiquing the mores of his time.