“Polymath” and “polyhistor” (first attested in English 1580/1620 and in Greco-Roman antiquity in the name of the 1st century BCE scholar Alexander Polyhistor), denoting a universal scholar, were evaluative descriptors in the early modern period, earned by those who “know many sciences thoroughly” (“vielerley Wissenschaften gründlich verstehet”) [1]. The German Polyhistor acquired an emphatically positive connotation through Daniel Georg …