10 Famous Geniuses and the Work That Changed History

What makes someone a genius? There is no scientific test for it, but most people mean a person whose work changed how everyone after them thinks, builds, rules or creates. The ten figures below are a classic starting list, chosen to cover different fields rather than to rank one above another: mathematics and physics, philosophy, statecraft, oratory, painting and sculpture, drama and music.

For each one you will find what they actually achieved, when they lived and why their work still matters, along with a few popular claims that do not hold up. Six of the ten came from the ancient Greek and Roman world or Renaissance Italy, a reminder of how much the Mediterranean shaped Western thought; the other four come from England and Germany. Any such list is personal, and many brilliant people, especially women, scientists outside Europe and thinkers whose names were never recorded, could stand beside them. Treat it as an invitation to read further rather than a final verdict.

Mathematics and physics

Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 BC)

Archimedes of Syracuse, a Greek city in Sicily, is often called the greatest mathematician of the ancient world. Using the "method of exhaustion", a forerunner of calculus, he found the area of a circle and the surface area and volume of a sphere, and he produced a close estimate of pi. He founded the study of statics and hydrostatics, explained the lever and buoyancy, and is linked with the screw pump that still bears his name.

He was killed by a Roman soldier when Syracuse fell around 212 BC, reportedly against orders to spare him. More than a century later, Cicero found his neglected tomb, marked as Archimedes had asked with a sphere inside a cylinder, the figure he considered his finest proof.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727)

Newton's Principia, published in 1687, set out the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, showing for the first time that the same rules govern a falling apple and an orbiting planet. From them he derived Kepler's laws and explained tides, comets and the slow wobble of Earth's axis. He also co-invented calculus, independently of Leibniz, and did pioneering work on light and colour.

His prediction that Earth bulges at the equator was later confirmed by French survey expeditions, which helped win over scientists on the Continent. Dates differ by calendar: he was born on Christmas Day 1642 in the Julian calendar then used in England, which is 4 January 1643 in today's calendar.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

The German-born physicist published special relativity and the equation E = mc² in 1905, and completed general relativity, which describes gravity as the curving of space and time, in November 1915. General relativity explained a small irregularity in Mercury's orbit that Newton's theory could not, and predicted that starlight passing close to the Sun would bend. Expeditions organised by Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson confirmed that bending during the solar eclipse of May 1919, making Einstein world-famous.

His Nobel Prize in Physics, the 1921 prize awarded in 1922, was given not for relativity, still debated at the time, but for explaining the photoelectric effect, a cornerstone of quantum theory.

Philosophy and the power of words

Aristotle (384–322 BC)

Born in Stagira in northern Greece, Aristotle studied for about twenty years in Plato's Academy, then tutored the young Alexander the Great from 343 BC, when the prince was about 13. Back in Athens he founded his own school, the Lyceum. His surviving works cover logic, physics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetry, and together they form the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.

Unlike his teacher, he grounded knowledge in observation, which made him a founder of biology as well as philosophy. His Nicomachean Ethics, named after his son Nicomachus, asks how a person should live and remains one of the most read books on ethics; its companion, Politics, asks the same question for a whole community.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC)

Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, orator and philosopher who rose to the consulship in 63 BC despite coming from a family outside the old Roman aristocracy. After brief military service under Pompeius Strabo and Sulla, he trained in law under the jurist Quintus Mucius Scaevola and made his name in the courts.

His greater legacy is literary. He brought Greek philosophy to Roman readers and coined much of the Latin vocabulary used to discuss it, and his prose style shaped European writing for centuries. After attacking Mark Antony in a series of speeches, he was put on the proscription lists and killed on 7 December 43 BC.

Art, engineering and invention

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

Leonardo is the model of the Renaissance polymath: painter of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, and author of notebooks full of anatomy, optics, water flow, geology and machines. He sketched flying machines, an armoured vehicle, a parabolic mirror for concentrating sunlight and a mechanical calculator, and some smaller devices, such as a bobbin winder, were later used in manufacturing.

Popular lists often go further than the evidence. There is no proof that he flew a hang glider; a glider built to his design flew only in a modern television experiment. Claims that he invented pivoting scissors or a telescopic sight for muskets have no reliable source. Because he never published his notebooks, his scientific discoveries had little direct influence in his lifetime.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564)

Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor first, yet he became one of the most influential painters and architects in history. He carved the Vatican Pietà in 1498–1499, when he was in his early twenties, from a single block of Carrara marble; it is the only work he ever signed. He then painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling with scenes from Genesis and, decades later, The Last Judgment on the chapel's altar wall.

As an architect he designed the Laurentian Library in Florence and, from 1547, in his early seventies, took charge of St Peter's Basilica in Rome. His dome there was completed after his death with some changes.

Literature and music

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

Shakespeare was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon on 26 April 1564 and is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. His surviving work includes about 38 plays, some written with collaborators, 154 sonnets and two long narrative poems. He moved from comedies and history plays to the great tragedies, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, and ended his career with romances such as The Tempest.

He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried two days later in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. The tradition that he was born on the same date is possible but unproven, since only his baptism was recorded. His plays have been translated into every major language and are still among the most performed in the world.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

Born in Eisenach into a large family of musicians, Bach became the supreme master of counterpoint, weaving independent melodies into a single whole. His works include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor, the St Matthew and St John Passions, and around 200 surviving church cantatas.

He served as Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen and, from 1723 until his death, as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, directing music for the city's main churches. In his lifetime he was admired mainly as an organist; his reputation as one of the greatest composers grew after Felix Mendelssohn's revival of the St Matthew Passion in 1829.

Statecraft and empire

Augustus (63 BC–AD 14)

Born Gaius Octavius, Augustus was the great-nephew and adopted heir of Julius Caesar. After Caesar's murder in 44 BC he allied with Mark Antony and Lepidus, defeated Caesar's assassins at Philippi, and later defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC he became Rome's first emperor, ruling until his death at 75 in AD 14.

His long reign began the Pax Romana, usually dated from 27 BC to AD 180, a period of relative peace inside the empire, though not without wars on its borders. He created a professional standing army, rebuilt roads and public buildings, and around AD 6 founded the vigiles, seven cohorts of firefighters and night watchmen who each covered two of Rome's fourteen districts. His stepson Tiberius succeeded him; rumours that his wife Livia poisoned him were never proven.

What these ten lives have in common

Several patterns stand out. Almost all of them were relentless workers who produced enormous bodies of work, not single flashes of brilliance. Many crossed fields: Archimedes was an engineer as well as a mathematician, Leonardo an anatomist as well as a painter, Cicero a philosopher as well as a politician. And nearly all built on teachers and predecessors, from Aristotle in Plato's Academy to Newton, who said he had seen further by standing on the shoulders of giants.

It is also worth dropping the myth of the lone, effortless genius. Shakespeare co-wrote plays, Michelangelo ran workshops and Einstein relied on mathematician friends to master the geometry behind general relativity. If there is a practical lesson, it is that deep curiosity, long practice and learning from others matter at least as much as raw talent.

Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle; Wikipedia, Pax Romana; Wikipedia, Vigiles; Wikipedia, Pietà (Michelangelo); Wikipedia, Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci.

Related:

COMMENTS

BLOGGER: 4

AmitAugust 6, 2015 at 10:09 PM
U must add aryabhatta too..
Robert AlexanderAugust 7, 2015 at 3:36 PM
No Tessla, Bruno, Walter Russel or Edison?
adminMarch 15, 2017 at 3:46 AM
This article is completely awesome for me and often the one activity is done of searching content for collecting wonderful knowledge. seo Pakistan
UnknownMarch 18, 2017 at 2:36 PM
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus is a famous work. Michelangelo, Marcus etc are the great artist in the painting world. Nice article to see this impressive

Header$type=social_icons