Who are your favorite overlooked historical figures?
Lots of people were way more important than history books give them credit for. Do you have a favorite?
Mine are Ibn al-Haytham and Mansa Musa. For very different reasons. Ibn al-Haytham basically invented the scientific method. And Mansa Musa was such a baller that he caused inflation when he visited places.
I always wonder how close to South America they actually made it. I went to the Galapagos a couple of years ago and there’s no evidence of human settlement there dating back that far. But Easter Island is not that far west in terms of longitude.
It just doesn’t seem like human nature to get all the way to Easter Island and then stop. Maybe something happened and the entire society was like, “I’m never getting in a fucking boat again.” But if I had to bet, I’d put my money on people reaching the mainland and just not succeeding and creating a permanent presence. Why would Easter Island be the last stop?
Alexander Graham Bell. How can the guy who invented the telephone be overlooked you ask? It’s actually pretty low on the list of his (yes this is subjective) coolest achievements. His Wikipedia page is a blast.
Oddly enough (because we’re in the last few hours of Christmas right now), Saint Nicholas. People go at depth with their kids about the existence of Santa with many not realizing there’s an actual Saint Nicholas who not only has delivered actual gifts each year but was an explorer in his mortal years who was said to have control over the weather (which served as his “miracle requirement” into sainthood) and fought corruption in the Catholic church.
Thank you for opting for “overlooked” and not using “underrated”.
Maybe there are less famous people, but I think that Richard Feynman should be better appreciated. Reading his books taught me how to approach problems, both from a “how to ask” perspective to “why is this not really the question.”
He did a series of lectures aimed at undergraduates that CalTech recorded and made available: www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu
It’s not “general audience” but you don’t need a doctorate to enjoy them or anything. It’s a Nobel Prize winner explaining something he’s struggling to understand at times so don’t expect to get it all on your first go but he’s about as good a science communicator as you can realistically ask for.
Feynman Diagrams blow my mind sometimes. Like, his drawings to simplify a complex subject were basically a new form of math. But also…isn’t all math just drawings to understand a complex subject?
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