Education Bookcast

When we speak about people who have achieved a lot in their lives, we usually apply a single noun to describe them. Winston Churchill - politician; Nicolaus Copernicus - astronomer; Isaac Newton - mathematician; Christopher Wren - architect; Omar Khayyam - poet. In The Polymath, Waqas Ahmed reminds us that this is a misrepresentation of their lives. Did you know that Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize - for literature? That Copernicus also had discoveries in economics and mathematics, while spending most of his time managing Church estates? That Newton's main occupations were alchemy and biblical exegesis, and that he ran the Royal Mint? That Khayyam was in fact an astronomer and mathematician who wrote poetry on the side? Wren's career was variegated enough not to be able to fit inside a single sentence. Ahmed introduces us to a compendious collection of famous and not-so-famous historical figures with great accomplishments, and shows us just how varied their lives, careers, and output were. They were all