![]() ![]() He not only studied exotic animals, he also ate them. On the other end of the spectrum was Ernest Hemingway, who memorialized his gluttonous Paris years in his (posthumously published) memoir, A Movable Feast. While working on The Last Judgment, he wouldn't eat until the evening, when he was done painting for the day. Michelangelo was indifferent to food and ate "more out of necessity than pleasure," according to his apprentice and biographer Ascanio Condivi. Aristophanes, the ancient Greek satirist, attributed the keen Athenian intellect to their low-calorie diet. Jobs wasn't alone in believing that the secret to a creative mind is a sparse diet. ![]() You get a ton of vitality from not having to digest all this food." "After a week you start to feel fantastic. Later, Jobs embarked on weeklong fasts, going about it "in my usual nutso way," he told Isaacson. He supposedly ate so many carrots that "friends remember him, at times, having a sunset-orange hue," writes Isaacson. According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, the Silicon Valley whiz kid subsisted mainly on dates, almonds - and lots of carrots. Steve Jobs had some funny ideas about food, as he did about so many things. Quite a few geniuses had quirky eating habits. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein may or may not have been vegetarians. Many geniuses were vegetarians, including Leonardo da Vinci, Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw and the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Norbert Wiener. ![]() According to legend, when attackers ambushed him, he refused to escape by running through a bean field. His dislike of legumes may have led to his death. He supposedly forbade his followers from eating them, or even touching them. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras hated beans. "Ideas begin to move like battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place." In the end, it was a battle Balzac would lose. "This coffee falls into your stomach, and straight away there is a general commotion," he wrote in an essay titled "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee," published in a French magazine in the 1830s. He would work through the night, downing 50 cups of high-octane espresso. Then there was the French writer Honore de Balzac, who took coffee addiction to a new level. Those who seasoned the soup - with pepper, for instance - before tasting it were rejected outright. He had prospective job applicants taste while he observed them carefully. Thomas Edison used soup as an interviewing tool. So perhaps it's not surprising that, scanning history's greatest minds, we find many were inspired by certain food or drink, repulsed by others -or had some very peculiar dining habits. Some appeal to almost everyone instantly. Both nurture, inspire and occasionally intimidate. Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Isaac Newton, Gandhi, Pythagoras, Balzac, Marie Curie - scanning history's greatest minds, we find many were inspired by certain food or drink, repulsed by others, or had some very peculiar dining habits. ![]()
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