Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was that kind of brilliant mind who seemed to have been born just to poke at the status quo with a sarcastic smile on his face.
 

Born in 1872 in the UK, he was a philosopher, mathematician, logician, pacifist, activist, writer and, basically, a multitasker avant la lettre. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, not for writing sugary novels, but for managing to make philosophy sound like a good bar conversation between geniuses. Co-author of the dense (and somewhat sadistic) Principia Mathematica, he also found time to criticise wars, challenge religions and get arrested for protesting - because keeping quiet was never his strong suit.
 

He died in 1970, leaving behind a pile of ideas that still make many people frown and say: ‘this guy was ahead of his time’. And he was.