Let’s look at some individuals from history who showed multipotentiality:
Click on the pictures or the names to find out more!
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Ibn Sina (Avicenna) , as a child, studied law, science, Philosophy, and math.
He then, at the age of 17, started studying medicine. He became a great teacher
and poet, and much of early Western medicine was based on his work.
Leonardo da Vinci was a multitalented scientist, inventor and artist. He nevertheless
often failed to complete his projects, and struggled with self-doubt, believing that
his work was poor.
Albrecht Dürer is extremely well-known as a Renaissance artist. He was very interested in the
mathematics behind art, and eventually became an eminent mathematician, publishing the
first math book for adults in German.
Hildegard of Bingen became the abbess of a convent in the 12th century. In spite of little
education , she was a healer, and wrote books about natural history and medicine.
We still listen to the music she composed.
Isaac Asimov was a well-known chemist and a famous writer of science fiction, but he also
wrote books about history, astronomy, the Bible, Shakespeare as well as two books of
limericks.
We could cover many more people!
An older word for a multipotential person was a “polymath”.
The Wikipedia entry for “polymath” contains a long list of
people considered to be polymaths.
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