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The Most Famous

INVENTORS from Brazil

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This page contains a list of the greatest Brazilian Inventors. The pantheon dataset contains 354 Inventors, 2 of which were born in Brazil. This makes Brazil the birth place of the 24th most number of Inventors behind Egypt and South Africa.

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Brazilian Inventors of all time. This list of famous Brazilian Inventors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of Alberto Santos-Dumont

1. Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873 - 1932)

With an HPI of 64.80, Alberto Santos-Dumont is the most famous Brazilian Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 44 different languages on wikipedia.

Alberto Santos-Dumont, self-stylized as Alberto Santos=Dumont, (20 July 1873 – 23 July 1932) was a Brazilian aeronaut, sportsman, inventor, and one of the few people to have contributed significantly to the early development of both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air aircraft. The heir of a wealthy family of coffee producers, he dedicated himself to aeronautical study and experimentation in Paris, where he spent most of his adult life. He designed, built, and flew the first powered airships and won the Deutsch prize in 1901, when he flew around the Eiffel Tower in his airship No. 6, becoming one of the most famous people in the world in the early 20th century. Santos-Dumont then progressed to powered heavier-than-air machines and on 23 October 1906 flew about 60 metres at a height of two to three metres with the fixed-wing 14-bis (also dubbed the Oiseau de proie—"bird of prey") at the Bagatelle Gamefield in Paris, taking off unassisted by an external launch system. On 12 November in front of a crowd, he flew 220 metres at a height of six metres. These were the first heavier-than-air flights certified by the Aeroclub of France, the first such flights officially witnessed by an aeronautics recordkeeping body, and the first of their kind recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Santos-Dumont is a national hero in Brazil, where it is popularly held that he preceded the Wright brothers in demonstrating a practical aeroplane. Numerous roads, plazas, schools, monuments, and airports there are dedicated to him, and his name is inscribed on the Tancredo Neves Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom. He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1931 until his suicide in 1932.

Photo of Bartolomeu de Gusmão

2. Bartolomeu de Gusmão (1685 - 1724)

With an HPI of 54.72, Bartolomeu de Gusmão is the 2nd most famous Brazilian Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão (December 1685 – 18 November 1724) was a Colonial Brazilian priest and naturalist who was a pioneer of lighter-than-air airship design. He is also one of the main characters in Nobel Prize-winning José Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda.

Pantheon has 2 people classified as inventors born between 1685 and 1873. Of these 2, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased inventors include Alberto Santos-Dumont and Bartolomeu de Gusmão.

Deceased Inventors

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