Verified answer

Leonardo was definitely a genius in his own time and I look up to him for his sharp discernment of the world and his ideas. He specializes in many things and takes a very analytical and studious approach to investigation things deeper.

He can definitely be considered a scientist that made amazing visual contributions to the field. He was curious about the world around him and delved into intricate details of anatomical studies where no one else investigated and mechanical creation far ahead of his time. Art and Science are not fields that are completely independent of each other because both are creative fields.

If you want to use him as the subject of your Science Project, look into the ways he contributed through his understanding of mechanics and anatomy - He technically invented the first robot, helicopter, tank, machine gun, parachute, scissors, as well as various wartime machinery. He has also discovered uses for solar power, devised a theory on plate tectonics, and more. His contributions were mostly conceptual, since many of his designs weren't actually built. I would look into the criteria for the project a little more.

Leonardo da Vinci is considered by many to be the real founder of modern science, even though he is more widely recognized for his incomparable paintings . He was also a great engineer and architect, designing many of the chief structures and public works of Milan. His scientific notebooks are filled with studies and analyses of problems in dynamics, anatomy, physics, optics, biology, hydraulics, and even aeronautics, all far in advance of his time. He was an experimental scientist long before the formulation of the so-called scientific method. Leonardo was also, according to all accounts, a man of high moral character, gracious and kind in all dealings. Although his few extant manuscripts deal with art or science, rather than theology, there is no doubt that he wa s a sincere believer in Christ and the Scriptures, as well as the general faith of the church. If nothing else were available to give this testimony, his great work of art, The Last Supper, with its profound insights into the heart of Christ and the disciples, a painting that has blessed and stirred the souls of multitudes over the centuries, would bear witness of his faith.

Sort of....I consider him to be more of an inventor.

yes he was ascientist, inventor and artist

Yes he was

Leonardo's approach to science was an observational one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book De Divina Proportione, published in 1509.[13]

It appears that from the content of his journals he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on anatomy was said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis D'Aragon's secretary in 1517.[53] Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by his pupil Francesco Melzi and eventually published as Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci in France and Italy in 1651, and Germany in 1724, with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicholas Poussin.[8] According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into sixty two editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art".[13]

A recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as Scientist by Frtijof Capra [54] argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him. Leonardo's experimentation followed clear scientific method approaches, and his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting, these, and Leonardo's unique integrated, holistic views of science make him a forerunner of modern systems theory and complexity schools of thought

Leonardo's formal training in the anatomy of the human body began with his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.

As a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting.[13][50]

Leonardo drew many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, as well as muscles and sinews, the heart and vascular system, the sex organs, and other internal organs. He made one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero.[50] As an artist, Leonardo closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He also drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.[13][50]

He also studied and drew the anatomy of many other animals as well, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.

Engineering and inventions

A design for a flying machine, (c. 1488) Institut de France, ParisDuring his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River in order to flood Pisa. His journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.

In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On May 17, 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn.

For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c. 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a light hang glider. Most were impractical, but the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated.