How Leonardo gave top surgeon change of heart

London Times ^ | 9/28/05 | Dalya Alberge

[wagglebee]

It's really fascinating that Leonardo was so far beyond his time.

[wagglebee]

Not really sure if this qualifies for GGG or not.

[quantim]

My money is still on Newton as the greatest recorded brain.

[muawiyah]

Or, maybe Leonardo was merely a traveler stranded in a backwards place.

France's King Frances(?) built a university for Leonardo Da Vinci. He then dispatched his cousin, Rene d'Anjou, with a fleet to Padua to fight a war to rescue Leonardo and bring him to the university.

Among others who accompanied Rene were Christopher Columbus and his brother.

Whole lotta' stuff changed in this world after that event!

[strategofr]

"It's really fascinating that Leonardo was so far beyond his time."

The eye of a genius.

[wagglebee]

I would go with Leonardo, John Stuart Mill (who I disagree with on most things), Newton, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

[Siena Dreaming]

Personally, I think one of the Founding Fathers with the biggest brain was John Adams.

[Right Wing Assault]

I almost sounds as if Leonardo operated on living animals and people to get the info he got. How could he understand valve motion and blood flow otherwise? A dead heart doesn't seem like it would give up a lot of details.

[wagglebee]

I think John Adams certainly had an intellect that was probably close to being on par with Jefferson and Franklin; however, his ideas did not have the impact of theirs. His son was also a fascinating man whose intellect was seriously underestimated.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Max in Utah]

Personally, I think one of the Founding Fathers with the biggest brain was John Adams.

I vote for James Madison, the Father of our Constitution. Now that's one outstanding piece of work!

[Leo Carpathian]

You are forgetting to put Nikola Tesla as a #1 man who gave us most! All others pale in comparison and magnitude of their contribution to mankind. The greatest engineering genius and brain!

[em2vn]

Member of the Tesla cult?

[BamaGirl]

Now I'm really offended, at all of you. Where is the diversity?? Why do you only acknowledge the dead white men as geniuses? What about the one-legged bisexual African midget feminist geniuses???


</sarcasm off>

[quantim]

Newton remains as the unbridled genius who was able to contemplate the Universe and convert that thought into mathematical formulas that launched a technological revolution that remains today.  Of course many would argue 'Einstein' but he had quite a body of work before him, Newton did not.

Jefferson I suppose remains as the greatest political genius, at least as far as our country is concerned.  Fortunately his ideas and methodology worked and we are here to brag about him.

da Vinci concentrated on more Earthly things, and remains as the greatest 'artist' of that century. 

There are arrays of men and women on orders of magnitudes of smart people through out history with amazing historical perspective but there are very few actual 'geniuses.' 

There are some that think Michael Moore is a genius.

There are some that think John Kerry is brave.

But there are certain things in history that are absolute and cannot be rewritten.

[spinestein]

Einstein regarded James Clerk Maxwell as perhaps the greatest mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell

[Professional Engineer]

And God said...

ò E.dA = q/e₀

ò B.dA = 0 

ò E.ds = -d/dt(ò B.dA) 

ò B.ds = m ₀ò j.dA,

...and there was light.

[spinestein]

I used to have a T-shirt that had that printed on the front.



But I stopped wearing it because I got beat up a lot.

<?:^)

[metmom]

Einstein had Newton's work to go on. Newton INVENTED calculus, did he not? I could hardly understand it when I was taught it, but to invent it?!?! I think it would be a toss up between Newton and da Vinci. The problem is that they both contributed in such different areas that they complimented each other.

[quantim]

He was still two centuries behind Newton, but Maxwell is as smart as they get.