The 50 Greatest Visionaries

Andy McSmith chooses some all-time champions of forward-thinking

Archimedes 287-212 BCE

"Eureka," the great Syracuse visionary is said to have cried, running naked from his bath into the street, having worked out that an immersed body displaces its own weight in water. He also revolutionised geometry and anticipated integral calculus by 2,000 years, and invented a water screw used in irrigation and in pumping bilge from ships.

Sappho c620-c570 BCE

An inhabitant of Lesbos, Sappho was a lyricist in the literal sense that she wrote poetry to be accompanied on the lyre. At the time, it does not seem to have cause comment that most of her poetry was …