Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller, or Bucky as his friends probably called him, was a man of many hats, all of them probably some variation of a dome. He was an architect, an inventor, a designer, and a general all-around genius who thought he could fix the world with geometry and efficiency. If only life were as simple as a perfect polyhedron.

Fuller’s crowning achievement, the geodesic dome, was an engineering marvel, allowing for maximum space with minimum materials. It was also, unfortunately, sometimes a leaky nightmare. Still, the idea was brilliant, and it earned him a permanent spot in the pantheon of visionary thinkers, even if most people only remember the dome.

Born into a prominent New England family, Fuller's lineage was about as WASP-y as you can get. His ancestors were among the first Europeans to settle in Massachusetts. So, despite his wildly inventive mind and a penchant for pushing boundaries, he was about as Jewish as a clam bake.

He envisioned a world where everyone lived in efficient, self-sufficient dwellings, a utopian ideal that probably would have made anyone living in a Brooklyn brownstone spontaneously combust. A true eccentric, Fuller spent his life trying to make the world work better, even if the world wasn't always ready for his spherical solutions.