polymath
a person who knows a lot about many subjects
TRANSLATION
polymath = der/die Universalgelehrte, eine vielseitig gebildete Person --- GOOGLE INDEX polymath: approximately 500,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
His facility with statistics was only one of the impressive qualities of Jared Diamond, a POLYMATH who trained in physiology and who was professor of geography at UCLA.
(Los Angeles Times)
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Mick Ronson grew up a musical POLYMATH trained on the cello, piano, violin and harmonium.
(www.legacy.com)
(Los Angeles Times)
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Mick Ronson grew up a musical POLYMATH trained on the cello, piano, violin and harmonium.
(www.legacy.com)
Did you
know?
polymath
noun
- a person who knows a lot about many different subjects
(Cambridge Dictionary)
---
A polymath (from Greek polymathes "having learned much, knowing much," from poly = much + root of manthanein = to learn), is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. The term was first used in the 17th century. Polyhistor is an older term with a similar meaning.
Polymath is often used to describe those great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Golden Age of Islam, each of whom excelled at several fields in science and the arts, including people like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon and Omar Khayyám.
These thinkers represented an idea that emerged in Renaissance Italy, expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti, who said that "a man can do all things if he will."
Because of specialization, the polymath is slowly becoming an extinct species. However, there remain modern examples such as F. Story Musgrave, a decorated Marine, an aviation electrician, an instrument technician, an aircraft crew chief, a mathematician and an experimental parachutist with over 500 free falls.
He's also a surgeon, a professor of physiology and biophysics and boasts an MBA in operations analysis and an MFA in literature. As if that was not enough, he is an astronaut and the only one to have flown on all five space shuttles.
(adapted from Wikipedia and askmen.com)
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SYNONYMS
egghead, homo universalis, intellectual, jack-of-all-trades, laureate, renaissance man
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"John's our company polymath. He can fix just about any problem."
noun
- a person who knows a lot about many different subjects
(Cambridge Dictionary)
---
A polymath (from Greek polymathes "having learned much, knowing much," from poly = much + root of manthanein = to learn), is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. The term was first used in the 17th century. Polyhistor is an older term with a similar meaning.
Polymath is often used to describe those great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Golden Age of Islam, each of whom excelled at several fields in science and the arts, including people like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon and Omar Khayyám.
These thinkers represented an idea that emerged in Renaissance Italy, expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti, who said that "a man can do all things if he will."
Because of specialization, the polymath is slowly becoming an extinct species. However, there remain modern examples such as F. Story Musgrave, a decorated Marine, an aviation electrician, an instrument technician, an aircraft crew chief, a mathematician and an experimental parachutist with over 500 free falls.
He's also a surgeon, a professor of physiology and biophysics and boasts an MBA in operations analysis and an MFA in literature. As if that was not enough, he is an astronaut and the only one to have flown on all five space shuttles.
(adapted from Wikipedia and askmen.com)
---
SYNONYMS
egghead, homo universalis, intellectual, jack-of-all-trades, laureate, renaissance man
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"John's our company polymath. He can fix just about any problem."
