There are human minds that have changed the very nature we hypothesize and consider things in ways no one else could have done. Sometimes we call these minds geniuses but the actual name we give them matters less than what they have done for the benefit of humanity as a whole. These are the 10 smartest people ever existed in history.
10: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is a name that some people should know but he’s not as popular as he should be. A contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton, Leibniz is known to independently developed differential integral calculus. The two engaged in a raging debate on who should be given credit until their deaths. But Leibniz, unlike Newton, was a true polymath. Whereas Newton spent his spare time engaged in studying biblical prophecy and alchemy. Leibniz was making important contributions to many areas of thought and science.
Some of his philosophical ideas, such as the universe being formed of elementary particles called monads anticipated the modern understanding of things, such as molecules and atoms. Leibniz also made essential contributions to other fields. He could well be thought of as the first computer scientist and information theorist. This can be summarized in this concept of the Calculus Ratiocinator or universal calculator. Where he anticipates the existence of the modern computer centuries in advance. You might not be well known, if only because he’s German. But Leibniz made lasting and significant contributions to the building blocks of modern science and thought.
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9: Panini Ashtadhyayi
Number 9 on our list of 10 smartest people ever is Panini. Very few people outside of linguists’ circles have heard of Panini. Writing in the fourth century BCE in India, he devised many of the concepts concerning grammatical analysis and structure of language 2000 years before anyone else had put anything together of similar thoroughness. Embodied in his Sanskrit grammar, where he formulated a staggering set of rules numbering 3959. He expounds in-depth on topics such as, phonology, syntax and morphology to an astounding degree that would only take place more than two millennials later in Europe. He’s even credited with developing the first formal system that to a certain degree is mirrored in modern programming languages.