Dear Leonardo

Dear Leonardo,

At what age did you mother realise you were a genius?  Did she ever comprehend just what you were? I mean it is obvious to us now that you were not only ahead of your time but that you were also perhaps one of the most unique polymaths ever to have existed.  If you were alive today would you be buried somewhere in an ivory tower sketching out advances in nano-technology, renewable energy machines and solutions to global warming? Would you relish in gay rights and send your Twitter followers snaps of you and Ian McKellen strolling with ice-cream down the Via Appia? Would you be a left- or right-winger?  What would be your representation in the press?  Would your genius even translate into the modern setting though?  Would you be swamped by distractions, specialisms that did not exist in the 15th century, a different set of prompts leading you to manage a branch of Waitrose instead; your brilliant skills being ploughed instead into stocking efficiency and an interest in watercolour painting on your holibags?

Or what if you'd been born four thousand years earlier?  Perhaps some were; maybe there was a pre-historic genius somewhere in the world who invented the wheel, paper manufacture, the correct chipping pattern on a hand-ax. Maybe cuneiform writing came one day to an individual such as yourself in a flash of sudden blinding inspiration whereupon she wrote down the first skratchings without any thought to her own posterity. Leonardo da Vinci, your personal existence is nearly as obscure as your works are not. Studied, lauded, yet obscure.  I hope you were happy. Hard times to live in, mate.

Yours sincerely,

Ritchie Feynman