Visit any university and you’ll typically find its art and science departments on opposite ends of campus — or at least housed in separate buildings. Yet plenty of people throughout history have spanned this great divide. Here are a few you might recognize from one field, without realizing their contributions in the other.
(Credit: neftali/Shutterstock)
neftali/Shutterstock
Leonardo da Vinci created some of the most beloved paintings in the West, including the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. He was also a scientist, having studied anatomy, optics and, well, just about everything. And if that weren’t enough, da Vinci was also an engineer — he designed, among other things, robots and flying machines.
But da Vinci didn’t paint sometimes and do science at other times; instead, he combined the two. In order to produce the mysterious smile immortalized in the Mona Lisa, for example, he spent time dissecting bodies and studying ...
