Over 500,000 geodesic domes have been built worldwide. Many of the domes, such as this one built for the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, Canada, have remained in use.

Photo credit: Flickr/Paula Moya

Richard Buckminster Fuller, known by his friends as “Bucky,” is one of the key innovators of the 20th century. The grandson of a Unitarian minister (Arthur Buckminster Fuller), Fuller was also Unitarian. Buckminster Fuller was an early environmental activist and is also well known as teacher, philosopher, thinker, visionary, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet, cosmologist, environmentalist, humanitarian, and inventor. There are few men who can justly claim to have revolutionized their discipline and, accordingly, Fuller revolutionized many. Fuller was probably one of the first futurists and global thinkers, coining the term Spaceship ...