Francesco Melzi - Portrait of Leonardo

Signature written in ink in a flowing script

Benois Madonna, c. 1478–1481, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1501–1519, Louvre, Paris

Saint John the Baptist c. 1507–1516,[d 3] Louvre. Leonardo is thought to have used Salaì as the model.[97]

Rhombicuboctahedron as published in Pacioli's Divina proportione (1509)

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian High Renaissance polymath active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.

Hidden Roots of Celebrated Inventions

Popular culture views Leonardo as an isolated technological prophet, but historical analysis reframes many of his devices as syntheses of earlier traditions. Investigations show older prototypes for more than 100 inventions ascribed to him across medieval, Egyptian, and Chinese records. His distinct talent lay in recombining previous drafts into cohesive illustrations demonstrating functional utility.

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Portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1828

Exterior of the Goethe House on Großer Hirschgraben in Frankfurt am Main, showing its multi-storey yellow facade with gray trim and rows of rectangular windows.

Goethe's birthplace in Frankfurt (Großer Hirschgraben)

Pastel portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe painted in 1811 by Louise Seidler, showing him facing forward in dark clothing and a white neckcloth.

Goethe, by Luise Seidler (Weimar 1811)

Open book showing the title page of the 1774 first edition of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, with decorative vignette and publisher information from Leipzig.

First edition of The Sorrows of Young Werther

Goethe in 1810. Gerhard von Kügelgen

Black-and-white illustration of a large stone-like male head, with two nude female figures standing on either side, one crowning it with a laurel wreath.

Illustration of Goethe as a classical poet by Fidus (1901)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an influential German polymath, writer, and statesman whose works spanned poetry, drama, aesthetic criticism, and science.

The Abrupt Collapse of a Frankfurt Legal Practice

In August 1771, Goethe obtained his Licentiate in Law from Strasbourg and established a small legal practice in Frankfurt. He aspired to make jurisprudence more humane, but an aggressive approach in his initial cases caused him to be reprimanded. Having rapidly lost clientele, he abandoned the profession within months, allowing his focus to turn toward creative literature.

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Thomas Young by Briggs cropped

Young Thomas signature

Plate from "Lectures" of 1802 (RI), published 1807

Young's Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy

Thomas Young (scientist)

Thomas Young was a British polymath who contributed to multiple fields of science and was instrumental in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone.

From Multilingual Youth to Naming Indo-European

By the age of 14, Young had mastered languages ranging from Greek and Latin to Persian and Turkish. In 1813, he synthesized these comparative studies by introducing the term Indo-European languages. This classification came 165 years after Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn first proposed the language grouping in 1647.

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Borodin

Borodin at the age of 14

1993 Russian 1 ruble coin commemorating the 160th anniversary of Borodin's birth

Portrait of Borodin by Ilya Repin, 1888

Tomb of Borodin in Tikhvin Cemetery. The musical notation in the background shows themes from Symphony No. 2, the "Gliding Dance of the Maidens" from Polovtsian Dances; "Song of the Dark Forest"; and the "Scherzo" theme from Symphony No. 3.

Alexander Borodin

Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (1833–1887) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist, known as a member of The Five and composer of the opera Prince Igor.

Born a Serf to His Own Biological Father

Alexander Borodin entered the world as the illegitimate child of Luka Stepanovich Gedevanishvili, a 62-year-old Georgian nobleman, and 25-year-old Evdokia Konstantinovna Antonova. To manage social expectations, the nobleman officially registered the newborn as the son of Porfiry Borodin, one of his Russian serfs. This legal maneuvering assigned the young composer his permanent Russian last name while formally categorizing him as a serf.

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Christoph Bernhard Francke - Bildnis des Philosophen Leibniz (ca. 1695)

Leibniz monument at Leipzig University

Stepped reckoner

Sophia honours Leibniz symbolically with the laurel wreath in a relief by Karl Gundelach, part of the history frieze on the New Town Hall in Hanover

A page from Leibniz's manuscript of the Monadology

Leibnizstraße (lit. 'Leibniz Street') in Berlin

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (died 1716) was a German polymath, mathematician, and philosopher credited alongside Isaac Newton with the creation of calculus.

Inherited Volumes and Precocious Latin Verses

Gaining free access to his deceased father's extensive library at the age of seven allowed young Leibniz to explore advanced philosophical and theological works. By the age of 13, he displayed remarkable Latin mastery by composing 300 hexameters of Latin verse in a single morning for a special school event. These early self-directed studies established his intellectual independence long before his formal university career began.

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Hildegard von Bingen

Scivias I.6: The Choirs of Angels. From the Rupertsberg manuscript,[47] folio 38r.

Excerpt from a 12th century manuscript, preserved in the Ghent University Library[65]

Hildegard of Bingen and her nuns

Line engraving by W. Marshall

The Salem Scivias (1200), detail of St. Hildegard von Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen (died 1179) was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath known as a prominent composer of sacred monophony and mystic writer of the High Middle Ages.

Physical Sickness and Papal Validation of the Visions

Hildegard experienced visionary states while wide awake, yet personal hesitation initially prevented her from transcribing them. This internal reluctance manifested as severe physical illness that abated only after she committed her revelations to writing. Her prophetic authority received official legitimacy when Pope Eugenius examined and approved her visionary writings between November 1147 and February 1148 at the synod in Trier.

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M.V. Lomonosov by L.Miropolskiy after G.C.Prenner (1787, RAN)

The Lomonosov house in Marburg, Germany

The most grandiose of Lomonosov's mosaics depicts the Battle of Poltava.

Scheme of the Lomonosov-Effect during a transit of Venus

Diagrams from Mikhail Lomonosov's "The Appearance of Venus on the Sun, Observed at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences on 26 May 1761"

The grave of Lomonosov in Lazarevskoe Cemetery, Alexander Nevsky Lavra, Saint Petersburg

Mikhail Lomonosov

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a Russian polymath, scientist, and writer who discovered the atmosphere of Venus and the law of conservation of mass in chemical reactions.

Forged Pedigree on a Foot Journey to Moscow

In 1730, the 19-year-old Lomonosov walked all the way to Moscow in pursuit of science. To gain entry into the Slavic Greek Latin Academy, he falsely claimed to be the son of a Kholmogory nobleman. This strategic deception allowed a peasant fisherman's son to access elite education, though the falsehood nearly caused his expulsion in 1734.

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Avicenna Bust, left profile (cropped)

Portrait (1271)

Coin of Majd al-Dawla (r. 997–1029), the amir (ruler) of the Buyid branch of Ray

Canons of medicine book from Avicenna, Latin translation located at UT Health of San Antonio

Inside view of the Avicenna Mausoleum, designed by Hooshang Seyhoun in 1945–1950

The Soviet Union in 1980 published a stamp entitled "1000th anniversary of the birth of Ibn Sina"

Avicenna

Ibn Sina (died 1037), known in the West as Avicenna, was a prominent philosopher and physician of the Islamic Golden Age who heavily influenced medieval European thought.

Arithmetic Lessons from a Greengrocer

Before mastering Greek science at age 18, Avicenna began his formal education with literature and religious studies. By the age of 10, he had memorized the entire Quran. To acquire foundational numeracy, his father sent him to an Indian greengrocer who taught him arithmetic.

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Biruni-russian

An illustration from al-Biruni's astronomical works in Persian, explains the different phases of the Moon, with respect to the position of the Sun

Four directions and political divisions of Iran by Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī

Diagram illustrating a method proposed and used by Al-Biruni to estimate the radius and circumference of the Earth

The statue of Al-Biruni in United Nations Office in Vienna

Flowers by Hamid Naderi Yeganeh

Al-Biruni

Abu Rayhan al-Biruni was a Khwarazmian Iranic scholar and polymath of the Islamic Golden Age, known as a founder of Indology and modern geodesy.

Mountain Dip and Trigonometric Geodesy

At Nandana in Pind Dadan Khan, Al-Biruni determined the Earth's radius using trigonometry from the top of a hill. His mathematical calculations relied on measuring a horizon dip angle of 34 arc minutes. The resulting estimate of 12,803,337 cubits corresponded to a calculated radius of 3928.77 miles. This experimental geodetic method produced results within a narrow margin of modern measurements despite ignoring atmospheric refraction.

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Beijing Ancient Observatory 20090715-19 (cropped)

The Bencao on traditional Chinese medicine; printed with woodblock printing press in 1249; Shen grew ill often as a child, and so developed an interest in medicinal cures.

Painting of a Buddhist luohan, by Liu Songnian, painted in 1207; Shen Kuo not only listed literati painting as one of his cherished pastimes, but also Buddhist meditation.[29]

An 18th-century diagram of camera obscura

Bamboo and rocks by Li Kan (1244–1320); using evidence of fossilized bamboo within China's dry northwestern climate zone, Shen Kuo hypothesized that climates naturally shifted geographically over time.

A revolving table typecase with individual movable type characters arranged primarily by rhyming scheme, from Wang Zhen's book of agriculture published in 1313.

Shen Kuo

Shen Kuo was a Chinese polymath, scientist, and statesman of the Northern Song dynasty who mastered fields including mathematics, optics, and horology.

Navigating Beyond Due South

In his 1088 Dream Pool Essays, Shen Kuo provided the first description of the magnetic needle compass used for navigation. This innovation predated its first European description by Alexander Neckam in 1187. By establishing the concept of magnetic declination and true north, Shen took a decisive step toward making compasses practical for seafaring.

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1926 Rabindrath Tagore

Close-up on a Bengali word handwritten with angular, jaunty letters.

Posed group black-and-white photograph of seven Chinese men, possibly academics, in formal wear: two wear European-style suits, the five others wear Chinese traditional dress; four of the seven sit on the floor in the foreground; another sits on a chair behind them at centre-left; two others stand in the background. They surround an eighth man who is robed, bearded, and sitting in a chair placed at centre-left. Four elegant windows are behind them in a line.

Tsinghua University, 1924

Group shot of dozens of people assembled at the entrance of an imposing building; two columns in view. All subjects face the camera. All but two are dressed in lounge suits: a woman at front-center wears light-coloured Persian garb; the man to her left, first row, wears a white beard and dark-coloured oriental cap and robes.

At the Iranian Majlis (parliament) in Tehran, Iran, 1932

Black-and-white photograph of a stylised sketch depicting a tribal funerary mask.

Primitivism: a pastel-coloured rendition of a Malagan mask from northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea

Bust of Rabindranath in Tagore promenade, Balatonfüred, Hungary

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath of the Bengal Renaissance and the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize.

The Teenage Pseudonym That Deceived Literary Scholars

As a teenager, Tagore pulled off a remarkable literary deception. In 1877, he composed a set of works in the style of Vidyapati and claimed they belonged to a fictitious 17th-century Vaishnava poet named Bhānusiṃha. Regional literary experts accepted the poems as newly discovered ancient classics before the ruse was revealed.

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