Top 10 Greatest Geniuses of All Time
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519), more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath. His areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy,... read more Greatest genius of all time. The one and only universal genius.
The man could paint with one hand and write a paper with the other at the same time! No one will ever come nearly as close artistically and in terms of being ahead of their time.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 - 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development... read more "If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects." His quote suits him best.
He revolutionized the understanding of our universe with his Special (1905) and General (1915) Theories of Relativity.
Why 3rd? Must be 1st. No other chance at all. The revolutionizer can't be replaced by anyone even in the future.
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. He was a student of Plato and later became the tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle's writings covered a wide range of subjects, including physics, biology, metaphysics,... read more The great Greek philosopher, physicist, and polymath who was the first to give a scientific explanation of the universe.
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist and mathematician who is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. He is best known for formulating the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Newton also made significant contributions... read more Interestingly enough, he was more interested in the book of Daniel than his work.
How is he below Einstein? Einstein is just a pop culture figure. As a pure mathematics major, I hate how everyone assumes STEM majors idolize Einstein.
Inventor of calculus and the theory of gravity. He has been praised by so many other geniuses that no further justification is needed.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era, born in Salzburg. He composed more than 600 works, including symphonies, operas, chamber music, and choral pieces. His most famous compositions include... read more Not only is Mozart's music among those great pieces surviving centuries, but his abilities to recall entire symphonies and compose new ones out of thin air show his greatness as a genius.
Honestly, Mozart! This far down! But more importantly, underneath Wagner! He was a musical genius and pretty much the definition of genius.
"We need not despair on mankind knowing Mozart was a man." - Albert Einstein
"A prolific fountain of beautiful music." - Mike Fuller
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. His compositions, particularly those in the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, revolutionized opera through their complex textures and expanded use of leitmotifs. Wagner also... read more What for ordinary people defies understanding is the truth that one man could carry in him the totality of that design, could possibly construe from the first note to the last a coherent immensity of a complexity which defies analysis. - Professor George Stein
Perhaps the greatest genius who has ever lived. - WH Auden
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and statesman. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and... read more Great German writer and polymath. He had a used vocabulary of about 50,000 words, twice Shakespeare's! He is believed to be the last man to know all the knowledge in the world.
Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 - January 7, 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for developing alternating current systems, including the AC induction motor and polyphase power distribution. He also experimented with X-ray imaging, radio-controlled... read more Nikola Tesla gave us that much number of important things which no one else could ever give. Others researched things in science, but Nikola Tesla invented... Surely the underrated genius.
Underrated genius. How can you read this without him?
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He wrote approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and numerous poems. His works are still widely studied, performed, and celebrated globally... read more Perhaps the greatest writer who has ever lived.
James Clerk Maxwell (June 13, 1831 - November 5, 1879) was a Scottish scientist in mathematical physics. He formulated Maxwell's equations, unifying electricity, magnetism, and light as manifestations of the electromagnetic field... read more I would say JC Maxwell had the greatest mind of his time and the greatest scientific influence. Without his electric and magnetic interactions, light would not have been seen as an EM wave. Without that, Einstein would not have proved that nothing can exceed light speed. And we would not have had mass explained the way it was.
Planck would not have come up with the quantized theory of light, which sparked quantum mechanics and, so, no explanation of the atom after Rutherford. So Maxwell definitely gets my vote.
The Newcomers
Rabindranath Tagore FRAS, also known as Ravīndranātha Thākura and honored with the title Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath. He reshaped Bengali literature and music and made significant contributions to Indian art through the movement known as Contextual Modernism. His work in the late 19th and early... read more
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (also spelled Leibnitz. 1 July 1646 - 14 November 1716) was a German polymath who made foundational contributions to mathematics, philosophy, logic, science, and diplomacy. He is widely recognized, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, as one of the independent co-creators of calculus... read more
Archimedes of Syracuse was an ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, and inventor. He is famous for his contributions to geometry, calculus, and mechanics, as well as for inventions like the Archimedes screw, a water-lifting device still used in some applications today... read more The greatest mathematician of the ancient world. His contributions to math and science are of immeasurable value. Just to top it off, there is proof that he had rudimentary ideas of calculus, over a thousand years before its inception.
Napoléon Bonaparte (August 15, 1769 - May 5, 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution. He became Emperor of the French in 1804 and led successive military campaigns across Europe. His Napoleonic Code and administrative reforms continue to... read more He ranks along with Alexander the Great as the greatest military leader of all time.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art... read more Italian painter, sculptor, poet, and architect. He painted the Sistine Chapel and is perhaps the greatest artist who has ever lived.
John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 - February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian American mathematician, physicist, and polymath. He formulated the mathematical framework for quantum mechanics and co-developed the von Neumann architecture for computers... read more Brilliant mathematician and physicist! And extraordinary polymath!
Marie Skłodowska Curie (November 7, 1867 - July 4, 1934) was a Polish born naturalized French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, and won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her... read more
Stephen William Hawking (January 8, 1942 - March 14, 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. He served as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1979 to 2009 and is best known for his work on black hole radiation, often called Hawking radiation... read more The man qualified to succeed Einstein. He doubted the Big Bang, calling it the Big Squeeze, and advanced cosmology.
Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar FRS (22 December 1887 - 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician.Often regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. Despite having... read more
Gautama Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply the Buddha, was an Indian ascetic and sage whose teachings laid the foundation for Buddhism. Born in the 6th or 5th century BCE in present-day Nepal, he attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree after years of meditation... read more
Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809 - April 19, 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist. He is best known for formulating the theory of evolution by natural selection, which posits that all species of life descend from common ancestors. In 1858, he and Alfred Russel Wallace published... read more
Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, and engineer who made important and influential discoveries in many branches of mathematics, such as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also made pioneering contributions to topology and analytic number theory. Euler's... read more Arguably the greatest mathematician in history. The constant e (Euler's constant) is named after him, and he published significant papers in a huge range of topics at an unprecedented rate, including many so ahead of their time that they weren't recognized for their true usefulness for decades.
Socrates (c. 470 to 399 BCE) was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as the first moral philosopher of the Western ethical tradition. Although he wrote no works himself, his ideas are known through the dialogues of his student Plato and the writings... read more
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (April 30, 1777 - February 23, 1855) was a German mathematician who made seminal contributions to number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, and differential geometry. His 1801 work Disquisitiones Arithmeticae laid the foundations for modern number theory... read more
Terence "Terry" Chi-Shen Tao is an Australian-American mathematician who has worked in various areas of mathematics. His contributions include work in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic geometry, arithmetic combinatorics, and number theory. Tao received the Fields Medal in... read more
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, as well as for vocal music such as the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Bach's work greatly influenced... read more
Michael Faraday (September 22, 1791 - August 25, 1867) was an English scientist who contributed extensively to electromagnetism and electrochemistry. He discovered electromagnetic induction (1831) and formulated the laws of electrolysis... read more