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Most accomplished scientist, mathematician, inventor, engineer, chemist, biologist, doctor, etc.?

Ranger Dan

Ranger Dan

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With the passing of Steven Hawking, it go me thinking about who would be on the short list of the most accomplished or impactful scientist, mathematician, inventor, engineer, biologist, doctor, etc. Your short list (Mount Rushmore) is not limited to 4 nominations. It can have any number you wish, just use your own judgement of when the achievements/impact drops off significantly. Use whatever criteria you wish.
 
That's not easy. Archimedes, Newton, Gauss, Einstein. Where does Maxwell fit in? Also, these days the accessibility of data really makes a difference, as does the speed in which people can typeset complicated mathematical symbols.

A colleague once spent a week at a workshop run by Michael Atiyah. (Google him.) He told me that Atiyah would give a half-hour presentation and for him it was equivalent to reading a book.
 
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Not sure if you mean living or modern history... but if Wernher Von Braun is not among the top 4 in modern history, you need to make room for him
 
guitar playing physicist is taken
Brian-May-Gareth-Cattermole1.jpg
 
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massimoManca II said:
Not sure if you mean living or modern history... but if Wernher Von Braun is not among the top 4 in modern history, you need to make room for him
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Okay. Why? He was certainly a great scientist, but he did nothing that someone else would not have been able to do in two or three years, if that long. I suspect you and I are looking at this "list" differently.
 
Nitt1300 said:
guitar playing physicist is taken
Brian-May-Gareth-Cattermole1.jpg
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Not so fast, my friend. Votes for Iron Butterfly's basest, Philip Taylor Kramer who became and aerospace engineer after the band broke up and died mysteriously. Kind of a Gricar-esque death. But after four years of being missing, they found his car and body at the bottom of a deep ravine. He was thought he was about to release a revolutionary way to transport information and matter through space.
 
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Taking a stab at this

Albert Einstein
DaVinci
Gallileo
Ramunajan

One thing about science is that it builds on itself. It's difficult to pick just four, and it's difficult to name a timeframe - so I picked four that I thought stood out more than others, and were the basis for what others were able to do. Einstein I picked because quite frankly - he is the first name I think of when I think of geniuses.
 
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Obliviax said:
Not so fast, my friend. Votes for Iron Butterfly's basest, Philip Taylor Kramer who became and aerospace engineer after the band broke up and died mysteriously. Kind of a Gricar-esque death. But after four years of being missing, they found his car and body at the bottom of a deep ravine. He was thought he was about to release a revolutionary way to transport information and matter through space.
Click to expand...
A BASS player? Seriously? Next you'll be saying you know a drummer who can read and write.
 
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LionJim said:
That's not easy. Archimedes, Newton, Gauss, Einstein. Where does Maxwell fit in? Also, these days the accessibility of data really makes a difference, as does the speed in which people can typeset complicated mathematical symbols.

A colleague once spent a week at a workshop run by Michael Atiyah. (Google him.) He told me that Atiyah would give a half-hour presentation and for him it was equivalent to reading a book.
Click to expand...

It's also very difficult to compare scientific accomplishments across generations (like athletes) but (unlike athletes) this cuts both ways. 100 years ago there was so much still to be discovered that a biologist could wander around the rain forest for a month and discover multiple new species. Elements were still being discovered.

But what scientists are able to accomplish today (thanks to technology) is amazing. Last night I attended the awards gala for the Regeneron Science Talent Search competition (I serve as a judge, which is why I was invited). Some of you may know this from when it's original sponsor was Westinghouse. It's considered the most prestigious high school science research competition in the country (over $1 million dollars of scholarship money is shared among the 40 finalists with the winner getting $250K). Anyway, the stuff that high school students are able to do today (e.g. with free cloud computing based computational services) makes what was being done 20 years ago look like child's play. There was a woman seated at my table for dinner who was the first female winner of the competition (back in 1972) and she admitted that her winning project was rudimentary compared to what students are doing today.

Hell, even just the process of writing scientific papers has been sped up by orders of magnitude by having computers for statistics, graphing and word processing. I cannot fathom writing a PhD dissertation on a typewriter, yet people did it. I generally write at least one PhD length report per year (plus peer reviewed papers) and there's just no way that could happen 40 years ago.
 
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where does Elon Musk fit into this discussion? Is he more P T Barnum or Albert Einstein? Maybe we dont know yet.
 
LionJim said:
That's not easy. Archimedes, Newton, Gauss, Einstein. Where does Maxwell fit in? Also, these days the accessibility of data really makes a difference, as does the speed in which people can typeset complicated mathematical symbols.

A colleague once spent a week at a workshop run by Michael Atiyah. (Google him.) He told me that Atiyah would give a half-hour presentation and for him it was equivalent to reading a book.
Click to expand...
I would put Maxwell just in front of Newton.
 
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psuro said:
Taking a stab at this

Albert Einstein
DaVinci
Gallileo
Ramunajan

One thing about science is that it builds on itself. It's difficult to pick just four, and it's difficult to name a timeframe - so I picked four that I thought stood out more than others, and were the basis for what others were able to do. Einstein I picked because quite frankly - he is the first name I think of when I think of geniuses.
Click to expand...

I think people who truly ELEVATE science to that next level are people that should be considered.

I think DaVinci is clearly there. Einstein, too.
 
massimoManca II said:
Not sure if you mean living or modern history... but if Wernher Von Braun is not among the top 4 in modern history, you need to make room for him
Click to expand...
I've been to his home in Huntsville, AL. Toured the government built bunker in his back yard. My old site manager when I worked in Huntsville owned Wernher's home.
 
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sluggo72 said:
where does Elon Musk fit into this discussion? Is he more P T Barnum or Albert Einstein? Maybe we dont know yet.
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Musk is just a visionary and the money behind the things he does. It is others that actually bring his visions to reality.
 
[
Langmuir said:
My List

Newton
Einstein
Heisenberg
Schrodinger
Feynman
Click to expand...
I think both Feynman and Schrodinger best Heisenberg. Story about Feynman during his undergraduate years at MIT. He entered the Putnam Mathematics Competition, which is a famously difficult test given to undergraduates; in many years the median score is zero. The day of the test Feynamn was standing in his fraternity house's library when a brother walked in, looked at his watch, and asked, "Aren't you supposed to be taking the Putnam exam?" "I finished early." He was named a Putnam Fellow (top five, six).

I'm asking myself why I have Feynman over Heisenberg. Although I am more familiar with Feynman (he wrote several excellent books for laymen), I've just finished a bio of Heisenberg. Maybe it's all about being able to understand Heisenberg's work better than I can Feynman's. (The guy whose work you can't understand has to be smarter than the guy whose work you can understand.) Maybe it's just my being more of a fan for Feynman.

My favorite Feynman story (I found it online but have lost it, alas! Alas!): It's early in the morning at CalTech and a graduate student steps out of his lab for a drink from the fountain. It's early, no classes. The graduate student hears a familiar voice, he goes to investigate. He sees Feynman in front of an emtpy lecture hall, rehearsing the PHY 101 lecture he will be giving later that same day. I need to paraphrase: "I stood there, watching the world's greatest living physicist prepare for his PHY 101 class as if it were the most important talk he'd ever be giving." What an inspiration.
 
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Lots of well-deserving names already cited. How about Francis Crick.

It would be really interesting (more challenging) to narrow it down to most accomplished still living. My interest/bias in physics will show.
Ed Witten
Juan Maldecena
Kip Thorn
 
LionJim said:
He has the money to hire the smart people.
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He is much closer to PT Barnum.
Wasn’t responsible for PayPal success.
EV’s were around way before him.
Solar City is a bust.

I’ll give him SpaceX. Just not sure of his role.
 
LionJim said:
[

I think both Feynman and Schrodinger best Heisenberg. Story about Feynman during his undergraduate years at MIT. He entered the Putnam Mathematics Competition, which is a famously difficult test given to undergraduates; in many years the median score is zero. The day of the test Feynamn was standing in his fraternity house's library when a brother walked in, looked at his watch, and asked, "Aren't you supposed to be taking the Putnam exam?" "I finished early." He was named a Putnam Fellow (top five, six).

I'm asking myself why I have Feynman over Heisenberg. Although I am more familiar with Feynman (he wrote several excellent books for laymen), I've just finished a bio of Heisenberg. Maybe it's all about being able to understand Heisenberg's work better than I can Feynman's. (The guy whose work you can't understand has to be smarter than the guy whose work you can understand.) Maybe it's just my being more of a fan for Feynman.

My favorite Feynman story (I found it online but have lost it, alas! Alas!): It's early in the morning at CalTech and a graduate student steps out of his lab for a drink from the fountain. It's early, no classes. The graduate student hears a familiar voice, he goes to investigate. He sees Feynman in front of an emtpy lecture hall, rehearsing the PHY 101 lecture he will be giving later that same day. I need to paraphrase: "I stood there, watching the world's greatest living physicist prepare for his PHY 101 class as if it were the most important talk he'd ever be giving." What an inspiration.
Click to expand...

I have met a couple of Feynman's students over the years. Their stories:

1. One of his grad students kept trying to meet with Feynman to discuss his thesis. Most of his students tried to make an appointment with no results. Feynman's office had two doors. In desperation, my friend waited patiently outside the back door. The door finally opened, Feynman appeared with an attractive young lady, kissed her warmly goodbye, noticed his student and started yelling about privacy, then calmed down and said. "The problem is not getting young women, it is getting rid of them".

2. Another student of his saw Feynman walking in town with an attractive young lady whom he had briefly dated. She was now Feynman's model while he took drawing lessons. As they passed, he said, "Hello professor Feynman, Hi 'Susie'." Feynman whiplashed around and gave him a stare that could create virtual photons*.

He was a great physicist with a unique intuition about how the universe worked. The early death of his wife devastated him and brought out a side of him that she had never seen.

* Obscure quantum electrodynamics reference
 
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roswelllion said:
He is much closer to PT Barnum.
Wasn’t responsible for PayPal success.
EV’s were around way before him.
Solar City is a bust.

I’ll give him SpaceX. Just not sure of his role.
Click to expand...

There is talent required to be a visionary - certainly some luck involved, but there’s something else - and not everyone has it. Like Zuckerberg said - ‘If you invented Facebook, then you would have invented Facebook,’ or whatever the movie said he said about that.
 
Leo Ridens said:
I have met a couple of Feynman's students over the years. Their stories:

1. One of his grad students kept trying to meet with Feynman to discuss his thesis. Most of his students tried to make an appointment with no results. Feynman's office had two doors. In desperation, my friend waited patiently outside the back door. The door finally opened, Feynman appeared with an attractive young lady, kissed her warmly goodbye, noticed his student and started yelling about privacy, then calmed down and said. "The problem is not getting young women, it is getting rid of them".

2. Another student of his saw Feynman walking in town with an attractive young lady whom he had briefly dated. She was now Feynman's model while he took drawing lessons. As they passed, he said, "Hello professor Feynman, Hi 'Susie'." Feynman whiplashed around and gave him a stare that could create virtual photons*.

He was a great physicist with a unique intuition about how the universe worked. The early death of his wife devastated him and brought out a side of him that she had never seen.

* Obscure quantum electrodynamics reference
Click to expand...
Yes. He could be incredibly self-centered when it came to personal relationships.
 
Ranger Dan said:
With the passing of Steven Hawking, it go me thinking about who would be on the short list of the most accomplished or impactful scientist, mathematician, inventor, engineer, biologist, doctor, etc. Your short list (Mount Rushmore) is not limited to 4 nominations. It can have any number you wish, just use your own judgement of when the achievements/impact drops off significantly. Use whatever criteria you wish.
Click to expand...
Alley Oop. If I remember correctly he invented the wheel.
J.S. Bach - wrote several 2 and 3 part “Inventions”. (For those of you who slept through Music Appreciation class, you may have to look these up.)

Seriously, though, it’s almost impossible to compare across generations and eras, as many have noted.
Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein.
The designer/builders of the pyramids, Notre Dame cathedral, and several other phenomenal structures.
 
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