"The more I study Isaac Newton, the more fascinating he becomes."
Leibniz would also be a good contender:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/10/my-hero-leibni...
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-to-understand-the-univers...
"Gottfried Leibniz, active in the 17th and 18th centuries, who along with Isaac Newton invented calculus. Leibniz argued (against Newton) that there’s no fixed backdrop to the universe, no “stuff” of space; space is just a handy way of describing relationships. This relational framework captured Smolin’s imagination, as did Leibniz’s enigmatic text The Monadology, in which Leibniz suggests that the world’s fundamental ingredient is the “monad,” a kind of atom of reality, with each monad representing a unique view of the whole universe. It’s a concept that informs Smolin’s latest work as he attempts to build reality out of viewpoints, each one a partial perspective on a dynamically evolving universe. A universe as seen from the inside."
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"This interconnection (or accommodation) of all created things to each other,brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others,and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe.
Just as the same city viewed from different directions appears entirely different and, as it were, multiplied perspectively, in just the same way it happens that, because of the infinite multitudeof simple substances, there are, as it were, just as many different universes, which are, nevertheless, only perspectives on a single one, . . .
And this is the way of obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest order possible, that is,it is the way of obtaining as much perfection as possible.
—G. W. Leibniz, The Monadology, 56-58, 1714
I once read once a quote about Leibniz, that roughly went like: When Newton was buried, he was buried like a king. When Leibniz was buried, only his servant was present. But the long Leibniz is dead, the longer his shadow becomes.