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A polymath [a] [1] or polyhistor [b] [2] is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Polymaths often prefer a specific context in which to explain their knowledge but others can be gifted at explaining abstractly and creatively.
True polymaths are rare, so avoid unduly promoting the subject by trying to comprehensively list their occupations. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section of a biography should avoid giving the impression that its subject is a polymath by including a long list of fields and occupations:
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (/ ɛr ə ˈ t ɒ s θ ə n iː z /; Ancient Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης [eratostʰénɛːs]; c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC) was an Ancient Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; [a] 1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic and statistics.
Poincaré developed a similar physical interpretation of local time and noticed the connection to signal velocity, but contrary to Einstein he continued to use the ether-concept in his papers and argued that clocks at rest in the ether show the "true" time, and moving clocks show the local time.
Pythagoras of Samos [a] (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας; c. 570 – c. 495 BC) [b], often known mononymously as Pythagoras, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism.
The shift in meaning for mathema is likely a result of the rapid categorization during the time of Plato and Aristotle of their mathemata in terms of education: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium), which the Greeks found to create a "natural grouping" of mathematical (in the modern usage; "doctrina mathematica" in the ancient usage) precepts.
Robert Hooke FRS (/ h ʊ k /; 18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703) [4] [a] was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ("natural philosopher"), astronomer, geologist, meteorologist and architect. [5] He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665, [6] using a compound microscope that ...