Name: 10 People Who Died Before the World Realized Their Genius
Uploaded: 2025-11-29T16:59:47.000Z
Duration: 11 min 53 s
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If there's any one single person who can be said to have created modern science, it's got to be Galileo.

Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

And today we're looking at artists, scientists and visionaries who died in obscurity, dismissal, or even disgrace, only to be hailed as icons long after their final breath.

The ability to explain hereditary diseases and to engineer plants with desired properties are all consequences of the fundamental theory founded by Mendel H.P.

lovecraft, one whose name has become an adjective for the particular type of terror he inspired.

Now considered the father of cosmic horror, H.P.

lovecraft was virtually unknown during his lifetime, publishing most of his works in pulp magazines like Weird Tales.

Lovecraft's unsettling vision of ancient gods, forbidden knowledge, and existential dread never reached a broad audience.

He died in 1937, convinced he had failed as a writer.

However, after his death, his Mythos of Cthulhu, Arkham and the Necronomicon was preserved and expanded upon by dedicated fans.

He he was widely dismissed as an untalented writer by critics and public audiences alike.

His works were viewed as nothing more than fodder for young adults and eccentrics.

Lovecraft's work would be a pivotal influence on writing giants like Stephen King and modern horror as a whole.

Today, the Lovecraftian style is a genre of its own, proving that its founder's imagination was larger than the universe he created.

Humanity has come a long way from what the world looked like when Lovecraft was alive.

But the contemplation of our role in the universe, or lack thereof, is still at the forefront of our minds.

This Dutch master is now celebrated alongside greats like Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

But Johannes Vermeer died, nearly forgotten in 1675.

Famed for his exquisite use of light and works like Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer struggled financially.

His limited output and local reputation meant he faded into obscurity after his death.

It wasn't until nearly three centuries later that art historians rediscovered the genius of his work, stunned by his delicate brushwork and photographic realism.

Every little thing in Vermeer's every little point, every little mark has a meaning and has a purpose.

Vermeer's once forgotten canvases are now priceless treasures, exhibited in the world's greatest museums.

A man who lived quietly painting domestic serenity became, centuries later, a titan of Western art.

Part of the magic of Vermeer is to create more than he then he actually is.

Put down the sense of more there than there is.

From a very early age, just instinctively, he was thinking about numbers.

Numbers, he said, had personalities for him.

Born in India with no formal training, Srinivasa Ramanujan filled notebooks with equations, many of which he claimed were shown to him in his dreams by his family deity, Namagiri.

His genius was finally noticed by British mathematician GH Hardy, who insisted that Ramanujan visit Cambridge.

He was able to take a little that he knew farther than most mathematicians would be able to take them.

He had the vision to see what was important.

However, even after reaching Cambridge, Ramanujan's work was so advanced that many mathematicians of his time struggled to comprehend it.

Ramanujan would die at the young age of 32, his potential barely tapped.

Decades later, mathematicians proved the depth of his discoveries.

Many of his theorems now underpin foundational aspects of modern number theory and string theory.

And it took the world generations to understand.

Manujan's work has now formed the basis for superstring theory and multidimensional physics, some of the most advanced math that all the high end scientists are still using today.

The pioneer who first saw the true power of the computer lived way back.

Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace, contemplated computers that could go beyond calculation.

Working with Charles Babbage's Analytical engine in the 1800s, Ada wrote the first ever computational algorithm.

Unfortunately, she was dismissed as nothing more than a fanciful aristocrat dabbling in mathematics.

Victorian society couldn't fathom her vision that machines could compose music, create art, or think symbolically.

She published the first computer program as long ago as 1843.

It did not help her cause that she lived in an era where women were poorly represented in society.

It wasn't until the rise of computing in the 20th century that ADA's insights were hailed and she was recognized as the first computer programmer.

Today, her legacy lives on in programming languages, tech awards and every device powered by digital thought.

This was somebody with enormous talent, in an extraordinary environment, hugely privileged with, with a background that made her a celebrity from birth, struggling for balance.

And the meaning she sought was to be a savant.

He'd eked out an obscure and unexceptional life.

But when the lawyer put pen to paper, the writer conjured a disturbing world where the absurd was commonplace and reality a nightmare.

Franz Kafka died in 1924 with a peculiar set of instructions.

In his will, he wished for his unpublished manuscripts to be burned.

His close friend Max Brod refused to follow his last request and thankfully, literature was forever changed.

Kafka's stories were surreal and disquieting, exploring alienation, absurdity and bureaucratic nightmares.

After his passing, Kafka's writing struck a nerve with a modern world drowning in systems and searching for meaning.

Yet during his lifetime, Kafka was largely unknown and deeply convinced of his own failure as a writer.

Today the phrase Kafkaesque is found in dictionaries and his style is a pillar of existential literature.

The man who feared being misunderstood became the author of an era's most haunting truths.

Since his death, Franz Kafka's work has become enormously influential.

It remains unrivaled for its intensity, modernity and prescience.

First and foremost, Bach was a brilliant musician, a virtuoso such as the world had never seen before.

Although admired by some experts, Johann Sebastian Bach's complex baroque's compositions were mostly overshadowed by his skill as a performer.

After his death in 1750, his works remained forgotten, surviving mostly as teaching exercises.

It wasn't until 1829, when Felix Mendelssohn revived Bach's St.

Matthew Passion, that the world rediscovered his immense genius.

From the Brandenburg Concertos to the well tempered Clavier, Bach's music became the foundation of Western classical theory.

Now revered as the father of harmony, the composer, once dismissed as old fashioned, is immortal and recognized as the silent architect behind centuries of music.

His attitude to composing was that of a medieval craftsman.

He believed that everyone has his place in the world where he should humbly work to God's greater glory.

And now the poet Emily Dickinson is getting even more attention and a new look in books, online, on film and and in a major museum exhibit.

Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in seclusion, writing nearly 1,800 poems that she never intended to publish.

During her lifetime, fewer than a dozen of her pieces saw print, and

even those were heavily edited to conform to the poetic norms of the day.

Emily's stark dashes, unconventional capitalization and raw introspective voices were considered too strange, too fragmented.

She wrote on just about everything, including death, eternity, faith and longing.

With unsettling clarity, she she is a constant summons to me to think about language and its preciseness and not only its preciseness, but

Still, the World outside her Amherst home barely had any clue of her works.

After her death in 1886, her sister discovered her handwritten bundles, which revealed a poetic revolutionary.

Today, Dickinson is hailed as one of America's greatest literary voices.

The recluse who quietly reinvented poetry.

And Emily Dickinson is like a beacon of verbal power that will not be silenced.