Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
One of the most intriguing figures in the history of science and philosophy. He is one of the founders of differential calculus; he is one of the precursors of symbolic logic; he proposed a relational theory of space and time (Leibniz-Huygens correspondence and Leibniz-Clarke correspondence), although he had some difficulties in maintaining some absolutist element in his theory of motion; the notion of possible worlds, the famous monadology, the identity of indiscernibles, and a lot more!
Some of Leibniz's ideas became more feasible or more developed in this century. For instance, logic has definitely become closer to Leibniz's ideals, and become one of the essential foundations of computer science; and in many fields, Leibniz's idea that disputes can be resolved by saying "well, then let's calculate!", became feasible. Goedel's technique (Goedel number) used in his incomleteness theorem, for representing formulas or propositions within the sphere of natural numbers, was certainly envisaged by Leibniz. And Kripke's improvement of "possible-world semantics" was epoch-making in modal logic and related fields.
The general relativity constructed by Einstein, in some way, revived and enforced Leibniz's idea of the relational theory of space and time, and the idea for constructing physics only in terms of relative motions; Ernst Mach's ingenious idea helped this revival, and Einstein thought, at least for some period, that his own theory can fulfill such conditions. But, as it turned out, the general relativity is not quite a theory of relationalism, and there remain pervasive absolutist elements. Some writers even argue that the relativity theories are more unfriendly to relationalism than classical physics is. However, even these writers admit that some of the essential Leibnizian ideas survive in the general relativity.
See Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (excerpts with my notes)
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