Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus was a Roman naval commander, procurator, and friend of the emperor Vespasian who turned every spare hour into research. He wrote seven works spanning 102 volumes, most now lost: a twenty-volume account of the Germanic wars that Tacitus and Plutarch both mined, and a thirty-one-volume history extending earlier chronicles to his own time. What survived was Naturalis Historia, thirty-seven volumes covering the breadth of human knowledge and the natural world, an editorial template for every encyclopedia that followed. On 25 August 79, Vesuvius erupted across the bay from Naples. Pliny sailed toward Stabiae - some say to help evacuate people, some say because he wanted to see it closer. He didn't make it back.