Archimedes

Unfortunately, Archimedes is one of those semi-mythical guys who wasn't written about heavily until hundreds of years after his death. What we do know about him is a combination of contemporary and later sources, all of which agree on at least one thing: he was crazy smart.

He approximated pi to an unprecedented degree, which by itself is one heck of an accomplishment. He built world-changing inventions, created new mathematical formulas which incorporated infinity and zero (two concepts which scared the daylights out of Aristotle), applied buoyancy, and created complicated pulley systems which allowed for the earliest cranes to be built. I have focused mostly on how his inventions applied to warfare and farming, but those were the two chief interests of the ancient Mediterranean, when you get right down to it.

Though he died an untimely death at the hands of a foolish Roman Legionnaire, his concepts and inventions continued to change history long after his death. That is, the inventions that they could duplicate continued to change the world. There were several items the plunderers found in his workshop which could not be re-created and were taken as trophies by Marcellus and his Captains. One of them was a sphere with gears and levers which could calculate the exact position of the known planets.

Pax vobiscum