In my lifetime, I’ve been lucky enough to have met and befriended one true polymath. Before I reveal his name, however, let’s remind ourselves what that word actually means. According to online dictionaries, it describes an individual whose knowledge and skills span a substantial number of different subjects. The best known polymath in history was probably Leonardo da Vinci, whose multiple areas of expertise included painting, engineering, science, sculpture and architecture, to name just a few.
Among other historic polymaths (some of whom featured in a 2019 E&T article ’Great polymaths of history’) were, in no particular order, Benjamin Franklin, Aristotle, Lomonosov, Tesla, Newton and my favourite ones, Emmanuel Swedenborg, an 18th-century Swedish theologian, engineer, scientist, biologist and philosopher, and Vladimir Nabokov, the writer, poet, chess player, musician, literary historian, entomologist and lepidopterist.
My own real-life polymath...