The panegyrics written by Physiocrats who adored the French economist François Quesnay offer a revealing insight into what sort of individuals were celebrated as great thinkers, at least within the context of 18th century France.
Victor de Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau, compared Quesnay to the Chinese philosopher Confucius in a letter to J. J. Rousseau dating from July 30, 1767:
The discover of the net product, which we owe to the venerable Confucius of Europe, will one day change the face of the world.
The comparison to Confucius may come as a surprise, but Chinese culture was in vogue in Europe at the time. This can also be seen in the popularity of incorporating Chinese motifs (Chinoiserie) in 18th-century Western art and decor.
The Marquis de Mirabeau also compares Quesnay to the Greek philosopher Socrates in a funeral oration given on December 20, 1774:
Gentlemen, we have lost our master, the vertiable benefactor of humanity belongs to this earth only by the memory of his good deads and the imperishable record of his achievements. Socrates has been said to have brought down morality from the skies. Our master has made it germinate upon the Earth.
The physician Edme-Joachin Bourdoi de la Motte (1745-1835) even likens Quesnay to Benjamin Franklin in an unpublished and undated note likely written after the French Revolution:
Instead of comparing Quesnay to Socrates, we might find a more striking resemblance with Franklin and quite happily reconcile the two celebrated men because of the similarity of their education, to whom they owe nothing but to themselves, and their taste for sciences, as well as for the similarity of their spirits, good nature, and their character, which is so rare and noteworthy a sign of spirit blessed with wisdom and patience.
In the nineteenth- century United States, people would say that a problem was so hard to solve that it would even stump Nathaniel Bowditch.
Bowditch was one of the most celebrated thinkers in the new republic. Born in Salem, MA, he was famous during his lifetime for his book, The New American Practical Navigator, his work as a mathematician, and his translations of scientific texts. While his book made him a household name, his greatest impact would be on the development of business practices.
Bowditch was a key figure in the creation of impersonal business and banking institutions through his work at a variety of Boston financial institutions and while managing the finances of Harvard University. He insisted upon mathematical regularity in business practices, which he implemented new tools for organization and accounting. He created and popularized things like the pre-printed form and mortgage due date. Before Bowditch, New England banks write loan contracts by hand, and rarely demanded borrowers pay their loans before a specific date. These innovations increased access to capital, as borrowers could apply for a loan even if they lacked the social connections that had previously underwritten credit-- all they had to do was fill out the newly invented mortgage application. However, it deeply bothered Boston's elite, who were not used to having their banks demand re-payment of loans. Bowditch's fame as a mathematician and all- around genius went a long way to smooth the adaptation of these and other innovations.
In a sense, his brilliance has contributed to his anonymity. THe tools and practices he developed seem so natural that we no longer think of them as having histories, but have been integral to the development of the modern economy.
Source: Tamara Platkins Thornton, Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life (Chapel Hill, Univesity of North Carolina Press, 2016).
For more information, see the recent episode of the Ben Franklin's World podcast where Thornton addresses this question directly.
Follow-up, did the term "savant" come from the genius of the same name?