Greatest Scientist Ever???

[Bo]

if the question is 'best scientist', then you could argue that the people who defined what we mean by scientiffic thinking should be on the list (I would say: Francis Bacon, Popper and Emanuel Kant)

but... lists like these are never complete.

hawking is definitely overrated;

Newton is a good one, but one can argue that he didn't fully realized what his resulst meant.

perhaps then Hamilton, for giving credit to unravel the underlying structure of newtonian mechanics?

 

Bo

[CraigD]

My vote is for someone not on the list, and a mathematician, not, technically, a scientist: Kurt Godel. His work on axiomatic incompleteness effectively ended the notion that Math and Science could every reach a state of (for lack of a better term) perfection.

[T0M]

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

 

I'm sorry but I feel like I have to redo your questions for almost no one answered more than one:

 

1) Who IS the greatest scientist?

2) Who influenced Mankind the most?

3) Whose accomplishments do you admire?

3b) And Why?

 

So,

1) I can't feel comfortable choosing one.

2) Darwin of course, that's unquestionable. We're even talking about mankind!

3) Me, myself, I admire Einstein the most.

3b) It's too relative to tell... lmao

 

T0M

[rockytriton]

Alan Turing... If it wasn't for him, this site would be in german.

[arkain101]

Why does anything exist at all? Why.. why.. why..

 

There could just as well be absolutly nothing, not even empty space. But there isnt... for some reason there is everything, and not only that, us as individuals are a part of it.

 

Even if there was a god, or some kind of creator, why is it here, even that could be non existant.

 

My new vote goes to whoever gives the best answer to this. You might not think about it like I do, but it doesnt only puzzle me, it makes me dizzy and sick when I fully comprehend it, and it leads me to feeling that everything is inside this thing, and nothing is on the outside, because it consists of multiple dimensions and because of this fact on certian dimensions there is no distance, time, or anything. It might be wrong to say, there is actually nothing and that is why there is something .. lol.

 

Why do "YOU" become a certain baby that is born, and not a different one, YOU cant be any other person, yet you became one... even stranger.

[my brain hurts]

It seems that the author of this list felt a need to be "inclusive", since some of the names offered have no business being here. Still, there are some fairly worthy competitors to choose from.

Gauss may have been "the prince of mathematics", but he's no Euler. Pavlov? Who's kidding whom?

 

Since the thread calls for the greatest scientist, I'll have to cast my vote for the author of the greatest scientific paper ever presented: Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

[karlpsol]

I will go for Alan Turing ! His work to break the Enigma code from tra nazis under the war was a turning point in the second world war. Also the fact that the idea of a "Turing Machine" has inspired many computer scientist over the years.