A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Knowledge about the past is so very important it's an entire subject to be discussed. On this subject I think Thomas Young wins the contest here. He was considered to be the last man to know everything. He was familiar with virtually all the contemporary Western academic knowledge at that point in history. Clearly this can never be verified, and other claimants to this title are Gottfried Leibniz, Leonardo da Vinci, and Francis Bacon, among others. Young also wrote about various subjects to contemporary editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. His learning was so prodigious in scope and breadth that he was popularly known as "Phenomenon Young."