Edgar Allan Poe, the Physicist?
I just read that Edgar Allan Poe, the poet, is credited with being the first person to conceptualize what we now call “Space-time,” that is, the idea that space and time are one in the same. From Wikipedia’s entry on Space-time:
The origins of this 20th century scientific concept began in the 19th century with fiction writers. Edgar Allan Poe stated in his essay on cosmology titled Eureka (1848) that “Space and duration are one.” This is the first known instance of suggesting space and time to be different perceptions of one thing. Poe arrived at this conclusion after approximately 90 pages of reasoning but employed no mathematics.