V inci, a small town near Florence, Italy, dates back to Roman times, when it was inhabited by the Etruscans. "But this town is even more renowned for having given its name to the famous Leonardo da Vinci, who, in any discipline of science and art he dedicated himself to, surpassed all his contemporaries" wrote Emanuele Repetti in his geographic dictionary of Tuscany (1). In the modern sense, during his lifetime, the great Leonardo had no surname-"da Vinci" means "from Vinci."Born out of wedlock to a notary-craftsman and a peasant woman, Leonardo was nonetheless well educated in Florence. At this cultural center, home of the Medici, he was apprenticed to sculptor and painter Andrea Del Verrocchio (2). "Marvelous and divine, indeed, was Lionardo the son of ser Piero da Vinci" said writer and painter Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists. During his apprenticeship, charged with painting an angel in Verrocchio's The Baptism of Christ, he painted a face so divine that Verrocchio never touched colors again "angry that a boy should know more than he" (3)."He is a poor pupil who does not surpass his master," Leonardo noted, when his mathematical knowledge exceeded his tutor's (4). Botanist, architect, civil and military engineer, town planner, hydrologist, cartographer Leonardo anticipated, 500 years ago, the scientific discoveries of our time. "He made models of mills and presses, and machines to be worked by water, and designs for tunneling through mountains, and levers and cranes for raising great weights, so that it seemed that his brain never ceased inventing; and many of these drawings are still scattered about" (3). Though his radical notions (aviation, military hardware, mechanical calculation) escaped his contemporaries, his genius was widely acknowledged in his lifetime. Yet, much of his work has been lost to his
