Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Born in 1646, Leibniz scattered his mind across more territory than seemed possible: he developed differential and integral calculus independently of Newton (whose earlier work had circulated since 1668, though Leibniz's notation became the standard), devised the modern binary number system, pioneered mechanical calculators with the Leibniz wheel, and envisioned combinatorial topology in 1679. As a philosopher he stood among the great rationalists alongside Descartes and Spinoza, arguing that ours is the best possible world God could have made - a claim Voltaire later shredded in Candide. He wrote in Latin, French, and German across philosophy, theology, law, music, economics, and dozens of other studies, his contributions buried in journals, tens of thousands of letters, and unpublished manuscripts. At the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel he built a cataloguing system that became a model across Europe. He died in 1716, the breadth of his expertise already becoming a relic as the Industrial Revolution ushered in the age of the specialist.