Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher, writer, poet, philologist, and musician, and is considered one of the most influential and important modern thinkers of the 19th century. The Gay Science (in German: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) is the last work of Nietzsche's positive phase, resembling "Dawn" and "Human, All Too Human" in its light, pleasant, and flowery style of composition. This is one of the author's most widely read works. It is also in this book that Nietzsche refers, for the first time, to Zarathustra, the ancient Persian prophet, creator of the doctrine called Zoroastrianism, whom Nietzsche made the herald of his philosophy in his book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".