Underappreciated geniuses

[J]

For architects I'll pick Mimar Sinan, quite famous in Turkey & some other areas of the former Ottoman empire since he designed many of their famous buildings but his name is almost unknown in the west. Though best known for his large mosques he also designed many bath houses, bridges, granaries, and public kitchens among many other things.

[RedImperator]

For architects I'll pick Mimar Sinan, quite famous in Turkey & some other areas of the former Ottoman empire since he designed many of their famous buildings but his name is almost unknown in the west. Though best known for his large mosques he also designed many bath houses, bridges, granaries, and public kitchens among many other things.

Sold. Non-western, too, which is nice to see.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Certainly most of the brilliant polymaths of the Islamic Golden Age would count here. They made extraordinary leaps from the natural philosophy of the Greeks in fields in engineering, the sciences, philosophy, architecture, medicine, etc, that would eventually allow the European Renaissance and Enlightenments to take place. A few are vaguely known in the West - namely Avicenna(Father of modern medicine, geology, and the concept of momentum, founder of Avicennism and Avicennian logic, forerunner of psychoanalysis, pioneer of aromatherapy and neuropsychiatry, astronomer, refuter of astrology and alchemy), though even he is underappreciated - but the vast majority, like Geber (father of chemistry and the experimental process of chemistry, discoverer of sulphuric, nitric, and hydrochloric acid), Biruni (father of anthropology, introduced the experimental scientific method to several fields of study), Alhazen (father of modern optics, pioneer in... pretty much fucking everything, just look him up), and dozens of others are, today, all totally unknown outside of their countries of origin despite their amazing achievements.

The same applies to many Indian and Chinese philosophers and mathematicians, of course.

As for the 20th Century, the philosopher of science Karl Popper, while he is very well regarded within his field, is certainly poorly-known or given extremely short shrift within the sciences despite solving the problem of induction and developing the principle of falsification to an enormous degree.

As far as music, I'm sure, in a corollary to my first submission of 'lots of dead Arabic polymaths', most of the black pioneers of rock and roll are pretty much ignored in favour of people like Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc, who all had the benefit of not only being extremely talented, but also of being extremely white.

I'd list some underappreciated kings and presidents from the past, except that I'm quite leary of referring to any politician as a 'genius'.

[Eleas]

Alan fucking Turing. This was a man who had thrown the frontiers of science wide open, launching the world and his country into a bright future... a future that saw him driven to suicide by that same country for the crime of loving the wrong gender. If that doesn't count as underappreciated, I don't know what would.

Beatrix Potter, semi-famous for her cutely illustrated children's books. In actuality became a renowned mycologist and conservator, who has since received a posthumous apology from the Linnean society for how she was treated. Genius? Perhaps, since she became what she was despite her family actively discouraging her from intellectual pursuits in favour of her assigned role as housekeeper.

Jagadish Chandra Bose, without whom both information technology and biology would look very different today. As seems par for the course, Bose faced discrimination and bigotry during his lifetime, and even today, the general public remains ignorant of the significance of his work.

Emmy Noether. Just... look the name up.

[Tiriol]

Alan fucking Turing. This was a man who had thrown the frontiers of science wide open, launching the world and his country into a bright future... a future that saw him driven to suicide by that same country for the crime of loving the wrong gender. If that doesn't count as underappreciated, I don't know what would.

For the purposes of this thread, I don't know if he truly qualifies: much of his reputation has been restored and his name (and his tragedy) is well-known.

[Eleas]

Point taken; he's probably always going to be known, if nothing else then for the Turing test.

[Marcus Aurelius]

As for the 20th Century, the philosopher of science Karl Popper, while he is very well regarded within his field, is certainly poorly-known or given extremely short shrift within the sciences despite solving the problem of induction and developing the principle of falsification to an enormous degree.

Popper by far is the most well-known philosopher of science among scientists. When I was in the university Popperian falsificationism was taught as the philosophy of science. That was in the 1990's, so apparently our professors (who were not philosophers) had not followed the recent developments too closely...

Most people probably do not know any philosophers of science by name and not too many recent philosophers are that well known in general. Like science, philosophy generates less stars today than before the WW2 or even in the 1950's and 1960's. Does that mean we should accept most prominent philosophers and scientists as underappreciated geniuses?

By the way, I don't think it's entirely correct to say that Popper solved the problem of induction. He merely wanted to go around it by advocating falsification instead of verification. Unfortunately falsificationism is not without serious philosophical problems itself, such as the Duhem-Quine problem.

[NDR-113]

Forget older composers, how about modern composers? I have no appreciation for twelve-tone music, I'm afraid, but surely composers such as Gunther Schuller (composer/conductor/French hornist/writer), David Bruce, Aaron Copland, Morten Lauridsen... there are a whole bunch of contemporary composers that no one has heard of because stupid pop music overshadows everything. Movie composers such as Howard Shore and Danny Elfman don't get recognized much either, although John Williams is pretty well-known.
Not that many people know about modern people in the fine arts, either.

[Thanas]

Older composers are far more obscure than these guys. If you are a regular concert goer, you often hear music from them. However, how often have you heard of Boccherini, though his music is fantastic?

[NDR-113]

Older composers are far more obscure than these guys. If you are a regular concert goer, you often hear music from them. However, how often have you heard of Boccherini, though his music is fantastic?

Well, there are a lot of prolific and unknown Baroque composers, I will admit, but at least many of them were appreciated in their own times. I am something of a regular concert goer, and I have rarely heard the people I mentioned.
And this is without bringing in the many female composers who are not recognized... Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Judith Zaimont... the list goes on.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

Just for the record, Red, there's an "l"--Bloch.

[Thanas]

Older composers are far more obscure than these guys. If you are a regular concert goer, you often hear music from them. However, how often have you heard of Boccherini, though his music is fantastic?

Well, there are a lot of prolific and unknown Baroque composers, I will admit, but at least many of them were appreciated in their own times. I am something of a regular concert goer, and I have rarely heard the people I mentioned.
And this is without bringing in the many female composers who are not recognized... Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Judith Zaimont... the list goes on.

Then you do not really go to many concerts, at least six or eight times a year one of the orchestras I frequent play modern music. And Clara Schumann at least is very well known and well played in germany, even on classical radio.

[NDR-113]

Then you do not really go to many concerts, at least six or eight times a year one of the orchestras I frequent play modern music. And Clara Schumann at least is very well known and well played in germany, even on classical radio.

Well, in any case, my point was that I think most of these musical geniuses, including of course the ones you mentioned, are unappreciated. Average people simply have not heard of them. What orchestral music fan has not heard of Aaron Copland, for example? Yet at my workplace no one has the faintest idea who he is. It saddens me greatly. Everyone knows the name of foolish pop artists, like Beyonce or Pink or Flying Cactus or whatever, but no one knows the masters (well, they may have a vague idea who Mozart and Beethoven are, but you know).

[Surlethe]

Is Corelli unknown enough to make the list? Corelli, Boccherini, and Telemann1 are three underappreciated Baroque composers, off the top of my head.

1 Also wrote several kickass viola concertos, so he tops it in my book, but I'm sure he was as famous in his day as Bach, so I don't know if he'd count.

[seanrobertson]

I hate to be so damned predictable (being a bodybuilder and all), but I have to nominate the late Arthur Jones as an underappreciated genius*.

*Brief aside: Arthur actually has a huge following in some fitness and strength-training circles. Indeed, if you Google his name, you'll find some of his fans almost worship the man like God. But for the most part, few people know who the guy is ... I'd honestly be surprised if anyone here other than Lord Mike's ever heard of Jones.

In brief, Jones' Nautilus machines revolutionized, and in no small part helped create, commercial gym chains. The Nautilus machines themselves are, taken as a whole, exceptionally robust, fine equipment. Each piece sells for several thousand U.S. dollars.

As much as I love several of these machines, I think it's fair to say they were all built with a few false premises in mind; e.g., that a given muscle or collection of muscle groups experience the greatest stimulus to grow when said muscle or groups reach the "fully-contracted position" -- i.e., the point at which said muscle(s) are furthest from a fully stretched position.

A perfect example involves the quadriceps of the front thighs. Arthur designed his machines' "strength curves" such that, when the trainee's knees are fully extended on the Nautilus "leg extension" machine, the resistance is greater than you'd find among similar exercises from other machine designers.

Art's reasoning wasn't terrible: when you flex your quadriceps, you'll see a lot more muscular activity when you fully extend your knee. Try it right now, just sitting down; you'll know what I mean. If you have very low bodyfat, you might even see striations in the muscles near your knee and on your outer thigh.

It doesn't, however, follow that providing maximal resistance in that position will necessarily maximize results ... Arthur simply assumed as much. Intuitively, it makes sense. However, when we're trying to falsify a theory, one test is how it stacks up to what we already know to be true.

So, to try and make a long story short, the whole fully-contracted position business doesn't look great when we examine those exercises which, over time, have produced more results than any others: the parallel-bar dip, the chin-up, the barbell squat, the deadlift, military press, bench press, etc., etc.

Those movements typically provide relatively little meaningful resistance to the working muscles in a so-called fully-contracted position; nonetheless, more muscular physiques have been built with aforesaid exercises than Nautilus-only training's ever produced.

There are certainly caveats to that (Nautilus equipment was/is often terribly misused), and it's a stupid hasty generalization/false dilemma to say, "If Nautilus were best, all the muscleheads would train on them."

Still, concerning muscle growth and increasing strength, the bottom line is progressive overload: lifting more weight for more repetitions. Nautilus machines certainly don't prohibit that, but the models which emphasize maximal resistance in this fully-contracted position are, with few exceptions, single-joint rotational movements (like the leg extension, where you're seated and the only joints rotating are your knees). Same said for the Nautilus biceps curl, hamstring machine, et al.

And, again, to try to make a long-winded tale palatable, single-joint movements are difficult to progress on precisely given their difficulty: if you start your leg extensions with, say, 50 lbs., increasing to 100 represents a tremendous amount of progress -- but the same person might start squatting with (hypothetically) 125 pounds and, in the same amount of time, could boost his squatting strength to over 250 for reps. Both figures represent doubled strength, but which will be easier to improve upon, particularly percentage-wise?

Obviously, the squat. Adding 5 lbs. to a 250 total could keep the trainee progressing and, in terms of load, only represents a 2% increase; on the other hand, 5 pounds atop 100 is a 5 percent increase. Thus, it is easier to improve one's squatting ability -- if only incrementally -- than it is to continue to improve on one's Nautilus leg extensions. Consequently, even if the leg extension does better target and stimulate the quadriceps muscles, one's long-term gains are best served by focusing on getting as strong as possible in squatting. (That's to say nothing of the fact that the squat also works other muscles, including the lower back, hamstrings, abdominals and calves. To a point, the more muscles you can work at once, the better.)

... All that said -- and Arthur's many other questionable claims aside -- as I indicated, the man's work is almost single-handedly responsible for the fitness boom of the late '70s/early 1980s. Without his Nautilus machines, I sincerely doubt commercial gyms as we know them would exist today.

Since those gyms are a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. alone, I'd say his contribution to society makes him an unsung genius. And that's to say nothing of his thoughts vis-à-vis productive resistance training which, while also imperfect, are infinitely more intelligent than the garbage you might read in those ridiculous monthly muscle magazines. Art understood that proper training had to be VERY hard, relatively brief and only as frequent as one could register palpable progress. Muscle and Fitness won't often tell you that ... it's more interested in featuring some juiced-up pro bodybuilder's program that will give you BIG GUNS IN SIX WEEKS!

[Marcus Aurelius]

Well, in any case, my point was that I think most of these musical geniuses, including of course the ones you mentioned, are unappreciated. Average people simply have not heard of them.

The classical music knowledge of "average people", even university educated ones, typically starts with late baroque names such as J.S. Bach and Händel and ends with late romantic composers such as Wagner. There are some notable exceptions, for example Stravinsky, but in general renaissance, early baroque and post-romantic composers are poorly known among the general public.

[Tiriol]

Well, in any case, my point was that I think most of these musical geniuses, including of course the ones you mentioned, are unappreciated. Average people simply have not heard of them.

The classical music knowledge of "average people", even university educated ones, typically starts with late baroque names such as J.S. Bach and Händel and ends with late romantic composers such as Wagner. There are some notable exceptions, for example Stravinsky, but in general renaissance, early baroque and post-romantic composers are poorly known among the general public.

It doesn't help that usually elementary school teachers focus only on the "big" names to give the little ones at least some inclination of the sheer scope and size of the musical history. Those are the names that stuck and people don't usually bother to research further.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Jan Ernst Matzeliger, born to a dutchman by his slave mother in Surinam. He invented a machine which could mass-produce shoes and was one of the first industrial crafting machines ever created. Because of his ethnicity he was almost never photographed, and his name was sufficient to confuse the issue. In a movie about his life he was played by a white man.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Rosalind Franklin, whose monumental body of work on DNA was quietly stolen and used to bolster the careers of her associates, and who was rewarded for pushing back the frontiers of science by the recommendation that she should stop working on such things.

I will second this candidate. Dont even get me started on the epic shafting that she got. Fuck it.

She is the one who really worked out the structure of DNA. Her grad student (either mistaken or with malice) took her data after she refused to give it to Watson and Crick, and gave it to them. She was a more cautious scientist than them (a better one), and they published faster after her data filled in the holes in their work. They did not even cite the X Ray Crystalograph that they printed in their paper as having been made by her. She published her results in the same issue, but they got priority because they were men and her paper was assumed to be a companion piece. She later left Kings College due to chronic mistreatment she received there and went on to study the structure of bacteriophages (after being forced to agree to not study DNA) until she died from cervical cancer at the age of 37 as a result of her constant work-related X ray exposure.

Watson slammed her, basically calling her an uppity bitch in his book The Double Helix, and when he Crick, and Wilkins(IIRC) shared the Nobel Prize for "their" discovery they did not so much as apologize or credit her whatsoever.

This is why I hate James Watson with a passion.

[Korto]

Part of the problem with underappreciated geniuses is that many of them are truly and tragically underappreciated and will be forever, because so many of the great developments in science came before the European science star era. How many Arab or Chinese scientists toiled to come up with important discoveries during the era of European backwardness, only to have their names disappear into the fog of history because everything they did was simply considered the property of their Emperor?

Also doesn't help that the West tried to hide the Islamic origin of many such achievments. I remember, not being taught explicitly but it being "common knowledge", that the Arabic contribution to science was to preserve the work of the Greeks. That's what they did. They preserved the Greek work until the West had gotten to a point where they could accept the knowledge (of the Greeks. That's important.) and start building on it. It was a very important thing the Arabs did, but that's all they did.
Recently watched a doco on Arabic scholars, and their many achievments. What a line of bullshit that "common knowledge" was. Can't remember a single name, of course, but there's at least one chappie the doco accredited with laying an absolute cornerstone of science: Scepticism. Wrote letters about it while he was disproving some Greek theoreys. We've got other guys measuring the circumference of the Earth (and thereby advancing Trigonometry), I think someone may have worked out (yet again) that the Earth orbits the Sun, with a damn fine proof with it, and so on. In more practical areas there's work on alloys, ceramic colours, the list's so long it went in one ear and leaked out the other.
Only name I can give you, after a google search, is that the inventor of algebra was Al-Khwarizmi, but look suspiciously at any scientific word that begins with an 'al' (algebra, algorithm, alchemy - apparently a reputable field, chemistry under it's original name, until charlatans got a hold of it)

[Anguirus]

This is why I hate James Watson with a passion.

The racism also contributes to that, in my case.