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Top 50 Famous Polymaths and Their Extraordinary Achievements

Throughout history, there have been individuals who have defied categorization, excelling in a wide range of fields. These individuals are known as polymaths, and they have made significant contributions to various aspects of human knowledge and endeavour. Polymaths are often seen as Renaissance men or women, embodying the ideals of the Renaissance era, which emphasized the pursuit of knowledge and the development of well-rounded individuals. However, polymaths have existed throughout history, and they continue to make important contributions to our world today.

Polymaths are often driven by curiosity and a passion for learning. They are not satisfied with simply mastering one field; they are always eager to expand their knowledge and horizons. This insatiable curiosity has led to some of the most groundbreaking discoveries and innovations in human history. In this article, we will explore the top 50 famous polymaths and some of their remarkable achievements in history. We will learn about their diverse talents, their creative processes, and the impact they have had on our world. We will also discuss the qualities that make polymaths successful and the lessons we can learn from their lives.

1. Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary by 23 years Michelangelo Buonarroti. 

Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine, and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.

2. Aristotle

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Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.

Aristotle’s views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. Some of Aristotle’s zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl reproductive arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle’s influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.

3. Benjamin Franklin 

Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the first postmaster general. 

His life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America’s most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honoured more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill, warships, and the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, and corporations, as well as numerous cultural references and with a portrait in the Oval Office. Over his lifetime, Franklin wrote or received more than 30,000 letters and other documents, which since the 1950s have been collected in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, published by both the American Philosophical Society and Yale University.

4. Isaac Newton

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Isaac Newton was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His pioneering book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, consolidated many previous results and established classical mechanics.

Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus, though notably he developed calculus well before Leibniz. He is considered one of the greatest and most influential scientists in history.

5. Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science.

Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, and projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and hydrostatic balances. He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn’s rings, lunar craters and sunspots. He also built an early microscope. During this time, he wrote Two New Sciences (1638), primarily concerning kinematics and the strength of materials, summarizing work he had done around forty years earlier.

 6. Albert Einstein

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Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics accomplished in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, Einstein was ranked the greatest physicist of all time. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein broadly synonymous with genius.

7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.

Goethe works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. Goethe’s first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis of Plants, was published after he returned from a 1788 tour of Italy.

8. Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations that gave only a minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

9. Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant’s comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy.

Kant believed that reason is the source of morality and that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant’s religious views were deeply connected to his moral theory. Their exact nature, however, remains in dispute. He hoped that perpetual peace could be secured through an international federation of republican states and international cooperation. His Cosmopolitan reputation, however, is called into question by his promulgation of scientific racism for much of his career, although he altered his views on the subject in the last decade of his life.

 10. John Stuart Mill

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John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy.

Dubbed the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control. A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work The Subjection of Women, Mill was also the second member of Parliament to call for women’s suffrage after Henry Hunt in 1832.

11. Avicenna

Avicenna was the preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, and serving in the courts of various Iranian rulers. He is often described as the father of early modern medicine. His philosophy was of the Muslim Peripatetic school derived from Aristotelianism. His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650.

Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna’s corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, and works of poetry. Avicenna wrote most of his philosophical and scientific works in Arabic, but also wrote several key works in Persian, while his poetic works were written in both languages. Of the 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.

12. Thomas Jefferson 

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Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Following the American Revolutionary War and prior to becoming president in 1801, Jefferson was the nation’s first U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation’s second vice president under John Adams.

As president, Jefferson assertively defended the nation’s shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. Beginning in 1803, he promoted a Western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation’s geographic size. Presidential scholars and historians generally praise Jefferson’s public achievements, including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, and his leadership in supporting the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Jefferson is consistently ranked among the top ten US presidents.

13. Voltaire 

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity, especially of the Roman Catholic Church and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, but also scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. 

14. Blaise Pascal

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Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. Pascal was also a pioneer in the natural and applied sciences. Pascal wrote in defence of the scientific method and produced several controversial results. He made important contributions to the study of fluids and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Following Torricelli and Galileo Galilei, he rebutted the likes of Aristotle and Descartes who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum in 1647.

Following a religious experience in late 1654,  Blaise began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. The latter contains Pascal’s wager, known in the original as the Discourse on the Machine, a fideistic probabilistic argument for God’s existence. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.

15. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. Leibniz has been called the “last universal genius” due to his knowledge and skills in different fields and because such people became less common during the Industrial Revolution and the spread of specialized labour after his lifetime. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. 

As a philosopher, he was a leading representative of 17th-century rationalism and idealism. As a mathematician, his major achievement was the development of the main ideas of differential and integral calculus, independently of Isaac Newton’s contemporaneous developments. Mathematicians have consistently favoured Leibniz’s notation as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus. In philosophy and theology, Leibniz is most noted for his optimism, i.e. his conclusion that our world is, in a qualified sense, the best possible world that God could have created, a view sometimes lampooned by other thinkers, such as Voltaire in his satirical novella Candide. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three influential early modern rationalists.

16. Michelangelo

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Michelangelo was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo’s creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. 

Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era. Michelangelo achieved fame early; two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before the age of thirty. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art.

17. Hypatia 

Hypatia was a Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was a prominent thinker in Alexandria where she taught philosophy and astronomy. Although preceded by Pandrosion, another Alexandrine female mathematician, she is the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded. Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counsellor.

Hypatia constructed astrolabes and hydrometers but did not invent either of these, which were both in use long before she was born. She was tolerant towards Christians and taught many Christian students, including Synesius, the future bishop of Ptolemais. Ancient sources record that Hypatia was widely beloved by pagans and Christians alike and that she established great influence with the political elite in Alexandria. In the twentieth century, Hypatia became seen as an icon for women’s rights and a precursor to the feminist movement. 

18. Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, and later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a Deist by critics, Descartes was Roman Catholic.

Descartes has often been called the father of modern philosophy and is largely seen as responsible for the increased attention given to epistemology in the 17th century. Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) continues to be a standard text in most university philosophy departments. Descartes’ influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytic geometry, used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.

19. Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research. Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level or orbit to another. 

During the 1930s, Bohr helped refugees from Nazism. After Denmark was occupied by the Germans, he had a famous meeting with Heisenberg, who had become the head of the German nuclear weapon project. After the war, Bohr called for international cooperation on nuclear energy. He was involved with the establishment of CERN and the Research Establishment Risø of the Danish Atomic Energy Commission and became the first chairman of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1957.

20. Marie Curie 

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Marie Curie was a Polish and naturalised French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. 

Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes. Under her direction, the world’s first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920, and the Curie Institute in Warsaw in 1932; both remain major medical research centres. During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.

21. James Clerk Maxwell 

James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist with broad interests who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell was the first to derive the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases, which he worked on sporadically throughout his career.

He is also known for presenting the first durable colour photograph in 1861 and for his foundational work on analysing the rigidity of rod-and-joint frameworks like those in many bridges. He is responsible for modern dimensional analysis. Maxwell is also recognized for laying the groundwork for chaos theory. Many physicists regard Maxwell as the 19th-century scientist who had the greatest influence on 20th-century physics. His contributions to science are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

22. Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method, along with his teacher Robert Grosseteste. Bacon applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle.

Bacon discovered the importance of empirical testing when the results he obtained were different from those that would have been predicted by Aristotle. His linguistic work has been heralded for its early exposition of universal grammar, and 21st-century re-evaluations emphasise that Bacon was essentially a medieval thinker, with much of his experimental knowledge obtained from books in the scholastic tradition. He was, however, partially responsible for a revision of the medieval university curriculum, which saw the addition of optics to the traditional quadrivium. Bacon’s major work, the Opus Majus, was sent to Pope Clement IV in Rome in 1267 upon the pope’s request. Although gunpowder was first invented and described in China, Bacon was the first in Europe to record its formula.

23. Archimedes

Archimedes was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Considered the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitely small and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems. These include the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.

The relatively few copies of Archimedes’ written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance and again in the 17th century, while the discovery in 1906 of previously lost works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results.

24. Alexander von Humboldt

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Alexander von Humboldt was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt’s quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.

Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a modern Western scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined by South America and Africa in particular.

25. Ada Lovelace 

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Lovelace was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.

Lovelace’s notes are important in the early history of computers, especially since the seventh one contained what many consider to be the first computer program that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Her mindset of poetical science led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool.

26. Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann von Helmholtz was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, the largest German association of research institutions, is named in his honour.

In the fields of physiology and psychology, Helmholtz is known for his mathematics concerning the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, colour vision research, the sensation of tone, perceptions of sound, and empiricism in the physiology of perception. In physics, he is known for his theories on the conservation of energy and on the electrical double layer, work in electrodynamics, chemical thermodynamics, and a mechanical foundation of thermodynamics. 

27. Marcel Duchamp 

Marcel Duchamp was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. He has had an immense impact on 20th- and 21st-century art, and a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art. 

28. Nikola Tesla

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Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Tesla first studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree. He then gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. 

Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging.  In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter but ran out of funding before he could complete it.

29. Buckminster Fuller 

Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as Spaceship Earth, Dymaxion e.g., Dymaxion house, Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map, ephemeralization, synergetics, and tensegrity.

Fuller developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome; carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres. He also served as the second World President of Mensa International from 1974 to 1983.

30. John Locke

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John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the father of liberalism. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, Locke is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. 

His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American Revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Internationally, Locke’s political-legal principles continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law. 

31. Linus Pauling 

Linus Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of five people to have won more than one Nobel Prize. 

Pauling was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. His contributions to the theory of the chemical bond include the concept of orbital hybridisation and the first accurate scale of electronegativities of the elements. In his later years, he promoted nuclear disarmament, as well as orthomolecular medicine, megavitamin therapy, and dietary supplements, especially ascorbic acid, commonly known as Vitamin C. None of his ideas concerning the medical usefulness of large doses of vitamins have gained much acceptance in the mainstream scientific community. 

32. Steve Jobs

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Steve Jobs was an American business magnate, inventor, and investor best known as the co-founder of Apple. Jobs was also chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar, and the founder of NeXT. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

In 1985, Jobs departed Apple after a long power struggle with the company’s board and its then-CEO, John Sculley. That same year, Jobs took some Apple employees with him to found NeXT, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher education and business markets, serving as its CEO. In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO after the company’s acquisition of NeXT. He was largely responsible for reviving Apple, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. He worked closely with British designer Jony Ive to develop a line of products and services that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning with the “Think Different” advertising campaign, and leading to the iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad.

33. Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin

Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin was a French salon holder who has been referred to as one of the leading female figures in the French Enlightenment. From 1750 to 1777, Madame Geoffrin played host to many of the most influential philosophers and Encyclopédistes of her time. Her association with several prominent dignitaries and public figures from across Europe has earned Madame Geoffrin international recognition. 

Her patronage and dedication to both the philosophical men of letters and talented artists that frequented her house are emblematic of her role as guide and protector. In her salon on the Rue Saint-Honoré, Madame Geoffrin demonstrated qualities of politeness and civility that helped stimulate and regulate intellectual discussion. Her actions as a Parisian salonnière exemplify many of the most important characteristics of Enlightenment sociability.

34. Alfred North Whitehead 

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Alfred North Whitehead was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology.

In his early career, Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to the philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of Western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another. Whitehead’s philosophical works – particularly Process and Reality – are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy.

35. Mary Somerville

Mary Somerville was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835 she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first female Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical Society.

One of the earliest uses of the word scientist was in a review by William Whewell of Somerville’s second book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences.[4] However, the word was not used to describe Somerville herself; she was known and celebrated as a mathematician or a philosopher.

36. George Washington Carver

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George Washington Carver was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the early 20th century. While a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve types of soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life.

Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, Carver was also a leader in promoting environmentalism. He received numerous honours for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. In an era of high racial polarization, his fame reached beyond the black community. He was widely recognized and praised in the white community for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a Black Leonardo.

37. Werner Heisenberg 

Werner Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a major breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, his matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. He is known for the uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for the creation of quantum mechanics.

Heisenberg also made contributions to the theories of the hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, the atomic nucleus, ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, and subatomic particles. He was a principal scientist in the Nazi nuclear weapons program during World War II. He was also instrumental in planning the first West German nuclear reactor at Karlsruhe, together with a research reactor in Munich, in 1957.

38. George Washington

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George Washington was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Second Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army in June 1775, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and then served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which drafted and ratified the Constitution of the United States and established the American federal government. Washington has thus been called the Father of his Country.

Washington has been memorialized by monuments, a federal holiday, various media depictions, geographical locations including the national capital, the State of Washington, stamps, and currency. He is ranked among the greatest U.S. presidents. In 1976, Washington was posthumously promoted to the rank of General of the Armies, the highest rank in the U.S. Army. 

39. Gerolamo Cardano

Gerolamo Cardano was an Italian polymath whose interests and proficiencies ranged from those of mathematician, physician, biologist, physicist, chemist, astrologer, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and gambler. He became one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance and one of the key figures in the foundation of probability; he introduced the binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem in the Western world. He wrote more than 200 works on science.

Cardano partially invented and described several mechanical devices, including the combination lock, the gimbal consisting of three concentric rings allowing a supported compass or gyroscope to rotate freely, and the Cardan shaft with universal joints, which allows the transmission of rotary motion at various angles and is used in vehicles to this day. Today, Cardano is well known for his achievements in algebra. In his 1545 book Ars Magna, he made the first systematic use of negative numbers in Europe, published with attribution the solutions of other mathematicians for cubic and quartic equations, and acknowledged the existence of imaginary numbers.

40. Ludwig Wittgenstein 

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Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. His philosophy is often divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus, and a later period articulated primarily in the Philosophical Investigations.

The early Wittgenstein was concerned with the logical relationship between propositions and the world, and he believed that by providing an account of the logic underlying this relationship, he had solved all philosophical problems. Wittgenstein left academia several times: serving as an officer on the front line during World War I, where he was decorated a number of times for his courage.

41. Gregor Mendel 

Gregor Mendel was a German-Czech biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas’ Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire today’s Czech Republic and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. 

Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favour certain desirable traits, Mendel’s pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. The profound significance of Mendel’s work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century more than three decades later with the rediscovery of his laws. Erich von Tschermak, Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns independently verified several of Mendel’s experimental findings in 1900, ushering in the modern age of genetics.

42. Robert Hooke

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Robert Hooke was an English polymath active as a scientist, natural philosopher and architect, who is credited to be one of the first two scientists to discover microorganisms in 1665 using a compound microscope that he built himself, the other scientist being Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1674. An impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood, he found wealth and esteem by performing over half of the architectural surveys after London’s great fire of 1666.

In physics, he approximated experimental confirmation that gravity heeds an inverse square law, and first hypothesised such a relation in planetary motion, too, a principle furthered and formalised by Isaac Newton in Newton’s law of universal gravitation. Hooke’s pioneering work in land surveying and in mapmaking aided the development of the first modern plan-form map, although his grid-system plan for London was rejected in favour of rebuilding along existing routes. Even so, Hooke was key in devising for London a set of planning controls that remain influential.

43. Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Cremona to a relatively poor noble family. She received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts, and her apprenticeship with local painters set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art. As a young woman, Anguissola travelled to Rome where she was introduced to Michelangelo, who immediately recognized her talent.

Her most distinctive and attractive paintings are her portraits of herself and her family, which she painted before she moved to the Spanish court. In particular, her depictions of children were fresh and closely observed. At the Spanish court, she painted formal state portraits in the prevailing official style, as one of the first, and most successful, of the relatively few female court painters. Later in her life she also painted religious subjects, although many of her religious paintings have been lost.

44. Margaret Cavendish 

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Margaret Cavendish was a prolific English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer and playwright. In her lifetime she produced more than 12 original literary works, many of which became well-known due to her high social status. This high social status allowed Margaret to meet and converse with some of the most important and influential minds of her time.

45. Isidor Isaac Rabi

Isidor Isaac Rabi was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging. He was also one of the first scientists in the United States to work on the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.

Rabi was involved with the establishment of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1946, and later, as a United States delegate to UNESCO, with the creation of CERN in 1952. When Columbia created the rank of university professor in 1964, Rabi was the first to receive that position. A special chair was named after him in 1985. He retired from teaching in 1967 but remained active in the department and held the title of University Professor Emeritus and Special Lecturer until his death.

46. Pierre-Simon Laplace

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Pierre-Simon Laplace was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-volume Mécanique céleste. This work translated the geometric study of classical mechanics to one based on calculus, opening up a broader range of problems.

Laplace is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Sometimes referred to as the French Newton or Newton of France, he has been described as possessing a phenomenal natural mathematical faculty superior to that of almost all of his contemporaries. He was Napoleon’s examiner when Napoleon graduated from the École Militaire in Paris in 1785. Laplace became a count of the Empire in 1806 and was named a marquis in 1817, after the Bourbon Restoration.

47. Jacques Cousteau

Jacques Cousteau was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, called the Aqua-Lung, which assisted him in producing some of the first underwater documentaries.

Cousteau wrote many books describing his undersea explorations. In his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, Cousteau surmised the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. The book was adapted into an underwater documentary called The Silent World. Co-directed by Cousteau and Louis Malle, it was one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to document the ocean depths in colour.

48. Omar Khayyam

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Omar Khayyam was a polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire. He lived during the rule of the Seljuk dynasty, around the time of the First Crusade.

As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics. Khayyam also contributed to the understanding of the parallel axiom. As an astronomer, he calculated the duration of the solar year with remarkable precision and accuracy and designed the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle which provided the basis for the Persian calendar that is still in use after nearly a millennium.

49. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.

His Discourse on Inequality, which argues that private property is the source of inequality, and The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order, are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. His Emile, or On Education 1762 is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. 

50. Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new English Renaissance in Art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. 

Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).  

What makes polymaths so remarkable is their ability to connect seemingly disparate fields of knowledge. They are able to see patterns and relationships that others might miss, and they are not afraid to venture outside their comfort zones to explore new ideas. The achievements of polymaths are a testament to the power of the human mind. They show us that we are capable of far more than we might imagine. If we are willing to open ourselves up to new ideas and possibilities, we can achieve great things.