Polymath
A
polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. The term was first used in the seventeenth century but the related term,
polyhistor, is an ancient term with similar meaning. The term 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 such individuals as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Paolo Sarpi, Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne,Michael Servetus, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, and Omar Khayyám. In Renaissance Italy, the idea of the polymath was expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti, in the statement that "a man can do all things if he will." Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible.