Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Another person I have been fascinated with is Leonardo da Vinci. He was an extremely visionary man who was way ahead of his time in inventions, human and animal physiology, which he applied to his art, and astronomy. He was not a scientist as such, but he did make many scientific observations. His two favorite subjects to study were water and light. All this and he was also the artist of famous paintings like the Mona Lisa and a sculptor as well.

If you can find them, his Notebooks are fascinating. He wrote backwards to keep people from reading his notes; he was an extraordinary artist and he seemed to study and dissect everything he saw.

Leonardo was far more than a great artist: he had one of the best scientific minds of his time. He made painstaking observations and carried out research in fields ranging from architecture and civil engineering to astronomy to anatomy and zoology to geography, geology and paleontology. In the words of his biographer Giorgio Vasari:

The most heavenly gifts seem to be showered on certain human beings. Sometimes supernaturally, marvelously, they all congregate in one individual. . . . This was seen and acknowledged by all men in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, who had. . . an indescribable grace in every effortless act and deed. His talent was so rare that he mastered any subject to which he turned his attention. . . . He might have been a scientist if he had not been so versatile.

(quoted from http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/vinci.html)

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