An 1874 definition of “polymath”, as a "person of vast learning", from Charles Krauth’s A Vocabulary of Philosophical Sciences. (Ѻ) |
“Doctor Faust the polymath is — as was Goethe the polymath — a man of "a hundred scholarly disciplines" [and] also a natural scientist.”
Chapter section on Alexander Humboldt, subtitled "German polymath", by cartographer John Clark, which lends more credence to Humboldt as a true polymath, as compared to passing mentions, made by Clark, of the lesser known cartographers Muhammad al-Idrisi and Shiba Kokan as being polymaths. [9] |
“Goethe was last true polymath to walk the earth.”
Johann Goethe (1749-1832) [LPKE] [LUG] [CBG] [TCG] (IQ=230) [7][8][10]The above eight established polymaths, with the shown known or estimated IQs, situate the view that "true" polymaths tend to have an average IQ of 196.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) [UG] (IQ=205)
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) [LUG] (IQ=200) [5]
Thomas Young (1773-1829) [LPKE] (IQ=200) [11]
Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) [GPE] (IQ=190) [6]
Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) (IQ=185) [9][10]
John Mill (1806-1873) (IQ=185) [5]
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) (IQ=175) [CBG] [10]
William Whewell (1794-1866) [1][2][3][4]
Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010) [1]
Simon Stevin (1548-1620) [1]
Casanova (1725–1798) [11]
Otto Neurath (1882-1945) [4]
Muhammad al-Idrisi (1099-1165) [9]
Shiba Kokan (1747-1818) [9]
G. Evelyn Hutchinson (1903-1991) [10]
Carl Djerassi (1923-) [11]
Jagadish Bose (1858-1937) [14]
Left: Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger labeled as a polymath—a contender for last universal physicists (similar to Enrico Fermi); renowned for his 1942 lecture What is Life?, which might justify his thrusting into the polymathy category—although, to note, he may not necessarily have been a “polymath” in the true sense or traditional sense of the term, being that it is relatively easy to label him quite aptly as a “physicist” and to most he his known as one of the greatest physicists ever, hence categorization as a polymath is a less common labeling. [6] Right: Depiction of a polymath, from the 2009 Intelligent Life article “The Last Days of the Polymath”, in which Carl Djerassi (1923-), Casanova (1725–1798), and Thomas Young (1773-1829) are classified as polymaths. [11] |
“It isn't often that the human race produces a polymath like von Neumann.”— Howard Rheingold (2000), Tools for Thought [12]
“If any one person in the previous century personified the word polymath, it was von Neumann.”References— Tom Siegfried (2006), A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature [13]