Herodotus

Greek historian from Halicarnassus known as the Father of History — who wrote the Histories, tracing the origins of the Persian Wars from the conflict between East and West through the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea — combining the first systematic historical inquiry with ethnographic curiosity about foreign peoples.

Invented history as a discipline — the Histories' combination of systematic inquiry into causes, collection of eyewitness testimony, and ethnographic curiosity about different cultures created the template for historical writing that Thucydides refined and all subsequent historians have followed.