also known as renaissance men or women. can we talk about them? there are the obvious ones like da vinci and ben franklin, but i'm always more amazed when i unexpectedly come across someone who just seemed to quietly master everything. usually it will be someone known primarily for one thing, but whose bio when examined is actually stacked with all these other uncommon accomplishments or abilities, or even just experiences (like say herman melville's crazy stowaway adventures, or i suppose conrad for that matter...).
(I was just reading about Frederick Law Olmstead who, besides having designed central park and dozens of others, was also a leading anti-slavery proponent, founded The Nation, and headed up a nascent Red Cross, among other things...)
these people are crazy!
― rent, Monday, 13 September 2010 07:04 (fifteen years ago)
Edmond Halley (8 November 1656 – 14 January 1742) was an English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist who is best known for computing the orbit of the eponymous Halley's comet.
While an undergraduate, Halley published papers on the solar system and sunspots. He left oxford without a degree but by age 22 Halley had already been elected to the prestigious Royal Society.
Halley published Catalogus Stellarum Australium which included details of 341 southern stars.
In 1686 Halley published the second part of the results from his St. Helena expedition, being a paper and chart on trade winds and monsoons. He also established the relationship between barometric pressure and height above sea level.
Halley convinced Newton to write the Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis (1687), which was published at Halley's expense.
In 1690, Halley built a diving bell, a device in which the atmosphere was replenished by way of weighted barrels of air sent down from the surface. Halley suffered one of the earliest recorded cases of middle ear barotrauma.
That same year, at a meeting of the Royal Society, Halley introduced a rudimentary working model of a magnetic compass.
In 1693 Halley published an article on life annuities, which featured an analysis of age-at-death on the basis of the Breslau statistics Caspar Neumann had been able to provide. This article allowed the British government to sell life annuities at an appropriate price based on the age of the purchaser. Halley's work strongly influenced the development of actuarial science.
On 19 August 1698, he took command of the ship and, in November 1698, sailed on what was the first purely scientific voyage by an English naval vessel.
His was the first such chart to be published and the first on which isogonic, or Halleyan, lines appeared.
In November 1703 Halley was appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford.
In 1716 Halley suggested a high-precision measurement of the distance between the Earth and the Sun by timing the transit of Venus.
In 1720, together with his friend the antiquarian William Stukeley, Halley participated in the first attempt to scientifically date Stonehenge. These dates were wrong by thousands of years, but the idea that scientific methods could be used to date ancient monuments was revolutionary in its day.
― rent, Monday, 27 September 2010 05:24 (fifteen years ago)
Every important eighteenth and nineteenth century philosopher and mathematician? Numerous economists from the twentieth century.
But John von Neumann was probably our last legitimate polymath. From Wikipedia:
The mathematician Jean Dieudonné called von Neumann "the last of the great mathematicians", while Peter Lax described him as possessing the most "fearsome technical prowess" and "scintillating intellect" of the century.
Mathematics – Completed the axiomatization of set theory.
Physics – Began the axiomatization of quantum mechanics.
Economics – Established game theory.
Computer Science – Established the von Neumann architecture.
He was also a key contributor at Los Alamos.
― Allen (etaeoe), Monday, 27 September 2010 12:28 (fifteen years ago)