Greatest Scientist Ever???

[Racoon]

I read a book, its called "Scientific Genius, the 20 greatest minds ever"

 

Who IS the greatest scientist? Who influenced Mankind the most?Whose accomplishments do you admire? And Why???

HERE ARE THE CANDIDATES:

 

Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) - Scientific Method

Archimedes (c. 287-212 BC) - Geometry and Mechanics

Galileo Galilei ( 1564-1642) - Astronomy & Physics

William Harvey ( 1578-1657) - Phsyiology

Rene Descartes (1596-1642) - Analytic Geometry

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) - Probability and Projective Geometry

Issac Newton (1642-1726) - Mechanics and Calculus

Karl Gauss (1777-1855) - Pure and Applied Mathmatics

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) - Electromagnetism

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) - Evolution

Evariste Galois (1811-1832) - Group theory

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) - Genetics

Robert Koch (1843-1910) - Bacteriology

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) - Nueropsychology

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - Relativity theory

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) - Quantum Mechanics

John Von Neumann (1903-1957) - Computer Science

Alan Turing (1912-1954) - Computer Science

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) - Chemistry

Stephen Hawking (1942- ) - Cosmology

 

It's A tough vote to be sure, There is no wrong answer!

Again, this list is from a book by Jim Glenn and he admits many names are excluded and some perhaps some wrongly included. But thankfully mankind has been BLESSED by such brilliant minds!

I cast my ballot for Galileo Galilei

[Boerseun]

Isaac Newton.

 

I cannot see why they keep on including Stephen Hawking in lists like these. I think he's getting way more credit than he deserves. Probably 'cause we simpletons cannot see beyond his wheelchair, and we are bulled into the romantic notion of this incredible brain living amongst us, denied the use of a proper body. So we credit him with more and more and more intelligence. Besides, he knows it, and he's cashing in on it. Go and read "The Universe in a Nutshell" to see how incredibly full of himself this guy is, and how shamelessly he goes about flogging his disability. For cash. I think the guy's a con, but that's a bit off-topic.

 

Ole' Isaac gets my vote, 'cause I reckon he had the biggest influence to this day. But then it must also be said that he couldn't have done what he did without being able to stand on the shoulders of all the greats before him, all the way back to the very first guy who did the very first experiment. So it's hard to say.

[Jay-qu]

Im not sure I know enough about all the people on the list to answer fully, but I will have to go with Newton

[EWright]

Newton, without a doubt. It isn't even open to argument.

[Dark Mind]

:cup:

 

Did you just say that on a science forum???

 

Wow... :confused:

 

I'm gonna go with Aristotle.

 

And I'm with you, Boerseun, on the Stephen Hawking bit :cup:.

[GAHD]

I don't think ANYone on that list deserves the title. My vote goes to nominating Nicoli Tesla for AC electricity.

 

If you want to go to ancient scientists, those listed have NOTHING on Hypatia Edit: 2.

[Tormod]

Too many names not listed...like Mendeleyev, who set up the periodic table of elements, Maxwell for his electromagnetic work, all the people at Bletchley park for working on the atom (JJ Thompson for example)...Niels Bohr and lots of QM people etc.

 

Harvey is a nice inclusion, his discovery of the blood system is important. But frankly I don't think it's possible to find a "best ever". Where are all the Nobel prize winners, for example. There are simply too many.

 

Most Famous != best.

[Erasmus00]

I give it to Newton (maybe Leibniz). Without the calculus, many of the later advancements in electromagnetism, statistical physics, etc, would never have gotten off the ground.

 

If it were deepest thinkers, I'd have to give it to Einstein. He laid the foundation for both relativity and quantum, even though he never liked quantum theory.

-Will

[Turtle]

___Well now, where we goin' with all these brilliant minds?:cup: We have a similar thread here at Hypography which asks the open question "who of all scientists is..."; however, as the list Racoon gives here is from a book on the topic, we must logically constrain our pick to that list.

___So, from the list my pick & why. Allan Turring (one or both of us has mispelled Allans last name:lol: ) Allan's work set the entire concept of AI to its most reductable form, & in so doing also sets our "intelligence" into the same form. It remains the standard, i.e. the Turring Test. He is the only one of the group to give a satisfactory answer to the questions of "why"; why must it be this way? Simply because of the consequence of starting with unity.:confused: Simply the best one.:confused:

[Racoon]

Why Raccon Chose Galileo: ( according to the biography, and not from actually knowing him; which would be a thrill! )

Galileo was the son of a successful musician; and his father gave young Galileo the best 'late' Renaissance education possible; which meant law, theology, or medicine.

Originally Galileo enrolled in the U of Pisa to study medicine; and after 4 years, he left without a degree!! He got all wrapped up in mathmatics and philosophy. :eek2:

Realizing that Pisa was a Aristotlian "dead end", he began his Mathmatical Teaching career. In Padua he instructed for 18 years. Fortunately for Mr. Galileo, Padua was Venetian and beyond the Control and Meddlings of the Church!

To make it short, Galileo realized that unequal masses fall in equal times!, and being the clever fellow he was, realized "that distance intervals increase by law of the square against elapsed time, which could only mean a constant acceleration."

So, he did not discover the law of Gravity, BUT he saw what kind of law it must be!!! ( FOR yOU nEWTON gUYS:naughty: :wave: )

He discovered the correct formulation of "isochronicity" of pendulums, leading to a new means of Time Keeping! :cup:

Still, whats refreshing about Sir Galileo was his Free Thinking ability!!!

His detachment from doctrine. " Any position contradicted by results is worth abandoning !" he eloquently stated :confused: :confused:

Yes, he made his mistakes as well, like in his 'moon/tide theory' ; although he was on the right track.

Although he initially rejected Copernican views of planets orbiting the Sun, Galileo, by observation from the "Worlds Greatest Telescope" in which HE BUILT in 1610, confirmed that truth!

He communicated his theories in the " Nuncius Siderius ", ( The Starry Messenger ) Much to the Chagrin of the Beurocratic Church which Dominated his era. :confused:

Galileo saw moons around Jupiter, valleys and mountains on the Moon!!!:wave:

Of course, the DUNG HIT the 'working theocracy' (ie priests and frairs) that resulted in a 'convocation of Qualifiers of the Holy Office' in 1616. :confused:

They forced him to recant and let it be known his heresy, Yada, yada, yada.

Galileo was ahead of his time , ( and worked with Keplers ideas as well as being his friend ) and paved the way for Newton and others!

I personally admire a Man who stood up so valiently and intellectually against the terrible theocracy that could have been our fate!:confused:

And upon that note, every Genius on this list Must Have felt the same thing.

TRUTH follows 3 steps: 1) it's ridiculed 2) it's violently opposed 3) Its finally accepted as true.

[CHADS]

Paul Dirac created the most complete picture of quantumn mecanics .... but since your list overshadows him with heisenberg ...then newton wins convincingly every time.

[sanctus]

You asked about the best scientist. Well for me a scientist shoulld be a bit more open to the outer world and so paranoid as Newon is said to heve been (never wanting to publish his things).

 

But anyway is there something possible like the most important scientist? I don't believe it my classification stops by a group of most important ones and then it becomes hard to judge who influenced more bacause there are so many ways of influencing mankind: on the worldvies on the social comportment, on the technological level and so on...

[arkain101]

Well I say the greatest scientist there is, is the scientist behind matter, energy, and consciousness. So many things can explain how they got here and how they work, but only one thing can explain why there is this mascarade in the first place and my vote goes to that source field.

 

If we have to choose a mortal, I dont have a greatest pick, but I would Nikola Tesla and his inventions were so inovative that it is the only reason we live in the world we do today, I'm not sure if we would be where we are without him, because Edison was obsessed with DC and would never think about going ac. They paid Nikola Tesla a few $ per every horse power of electricity that was created. They said that if he was alive today he would be richer than the whole world combined. Literally he would own the world from his work. Except he wasnt that kind of man, he was honorable and generous.

[infamous]

 

If we have to choose a mortal, I dont have a greatest pick, but I would Nikola Tesla and his inventions were so inovative that it is the only reason we live in the world we do today,

Even though he's not on the original list, I would agree that Tesla had an outstanding scientific mind. I personally would place him at the number two position because my overall choice would have to be 'Leonardo Da Vinci' ; Because his intellect was so far ahead of his time................Infy

[jkellmd]

Newton, without a doubt. It isn't even open to argument.

 

Even though he stole at least part of the credit for the inverse square law from Hooke, and can rightly only split credit for calculus with Leibniz? There is no doubt that his was a great mind, but he was lucky to have lived in the time that he did, with the RS getting off of the ground, and all.

 

Other moments in human history have been similarly charged with the presence of several great minds at once, collaberating. Manhattan Project, Vienna in the 18th century, Alexandria in late antiquity, Athens in 3rd-4th century BCE... Was Herophilus "better" than Erasistratus, or Fermi than Feynman?

[arkain101]

Tolstoy wrote; "men only learn when they're suffering". The question is; how much do you want to learn?

 

This is very true that we learn most things when suffering, oh the lessons I have been taught...

 

Suffering will eventually teach you how not to suffer, and when you learn this all things become blissful lessons.

[Bio-Hazard]

my overall choice would have to be 'Leonardo Da Vinci' ; Because his intellect was so far ahead of his time.

 

I agree. Based on the fact that this man was in the 1500s, he focued mostly on the different sciences along with their artistic attribute. Without him a lot of things that we comprehend today wouldn't have been achieved. I assume if he were to exist today, he would find a new cure, biological specimen, or just create some new technology we don't have, just so he can draw it.

 

I question if he had eidetic memory which would have led him to a greater life of science in this age where the Internet community and information highway exists. Of course many people wonder about how people of the past would work in today.

 

___edit___

You know what, scratch that.

Washu is the greatest scientist ever!!