Rabbi Akiva רבי עקיבא
the greatest of the tannaim, teacher of the generation after the destruction
Akiva ben Yosef was a shepherd for the wealthy Kalba Savua and was illiterate until forty. His employer's daughter Rachel agreed to marry him if he would go and study; her father disinherited her, and they slept in straw. The Talmud tells how Akiva saw a stone hollowed by dripping water and told himself: if soft water wears away rock, the words of Torah will surely wear into my heart.
He left to study and returned twenty-four years later with twelve thousand students. When his wife pushed through the crowd he told them: «What is mine and yours is hers.»
His method transformed Torah study: he derived law from every superfluous letter and organised the oral tradition into ordered categories; the whole Mishnah rests on his work.
His students died in a plague between Pesach and Shavuot; he began again with five, among them Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Meir. He supported the Bar Kokhba revolt. Under Hadrian he was executed around 3895 for teaching Torah publicly, one of the Ten Martyrs, reciting the Shema as he died.