leonardo da vinci walter isaacson goodreads

But it soon occurred to me that smart people are a dime a dozen. Whether I was at The Aspen Institute or “TIME” magazine or CNN, I know a lot of smart people. Who wakes up one morning and puts that on their to-do list? He even had a question that I loved, which is, describe the tongue of a woodpecker. Leonardo da Vinci never outgrew his wonder years. And, 500 years later, we can just sit there and marvel at Leonardo’s notebooks. Its operating system never goes out of style. And I realized, since I couldn’t get Steve Jobs’ notes from the 1990s, because they were all on some computer where the operating system no longer worked, how wonderful of a technology for the storage of information paper is. When I was working on Leonardo da Vinci, the biggest insights I had was going page by page through the 7,200 pages of notebooks that he had left behind. And, of course, Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in the rain, those electricity experiments helped him understand the notion of checks, balances, pluses, minuses that we see in our Constitution. That’s what Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is all about.Īnd when Einstein was looking for the theories of relativity, he pulled out his violin to play Mozart.

Steve Jobs, whenever he did a product launch, would show street signs showing that intersection of the arts and sciences. I like to take on subjects for my biography that stand in the intersection between the arts and the sciences, because, whether it was Benjamin Franklin or Steve jobs or Leonardo da Vinci, I think that’s what gives creativity. He said, for heaven’s sake, be a storyteller.

Walter Isaacson: You know, I had a mentor in New Orleans, sort of a family friend, great novelist, Walker Percy.Īnd he said, there were two types of people who come out of Louisiana, preachers and storytellers. Isaacson believes that those who thrive at the intersection of arts and sciences are the ones who will become a part of history. His biographies of influential figures range from Leonardo da Vinci to Ada Lovelace. Tonight, we hear from journalist, professor and author Walter Isaacson. Judy Woodruff: Next, we turn to another episode of our weekly series Brief But Spectacular.

Leonardo da vinci walter isaacson goodreads