Alcmaeon of Croton

Alcmaeon of Croton worked in southern Italy during the 5th century BC, writing on medicine and natural philosophy at a time when both were still tangled with myth. His biological investigations were unusual enough to mark him as a pioneer, and later writers would call him one of antiquity's most eminent medical theorists. But the uncertainties around his exact birth and career meant his contributions slipped through the cracks of history. He has since been described as among the greatest naturalists and neuroscientists of all time — a thinker of considerable originality whose work, for all its…