Who are ur top 5 favorite scientist of all time?

A few examples just to help and remind u (but not influence u I hope!)

1) Einstein
2) Bohr
3) Darwin
4) Heisenberg
5) Shcrodinger
6) Planck
7) Watson/Crick
8) Curie
9) Dirac
10) Rutherford
11) Feynman
12) Pasteur
13) Newton
14) Copernicus
15) Galileo
16) Kepler
17) Faraday
18) Maxwell
19) Kelvin
20) Fermi
21) Pauli
22) Hawking

1) Galileo (The grand-daddy of all that is science)
2) Newton (Laws & Calculus, 'nuff said)
3) Darwin
4) Einstein
5) Watson/Crick or Pasteur

In no particular order: Isaac Newton
Dr. Richard Feynman
Lise Meitner
Nicolaus Copernicus
Niels Bohr:m: Peace.

actually I forgot to mention mine!

In order they are

1) Isaac Newton
2) Neils Bohr
3) Erwin Schroedinger / Werner Heisenberg
4) Richard Feynman
5) Charles Darwin

Werner Von Braun

1.) von Neumann
2.) Hawking

I'd like to exclude the greats from prior to 20th century (Darwin, Ptolomy, Copernicus, Pasteur, Galilei, Newten, Bohr, et al) so as to give the greats of our time credit...


I'm a fan of the works of:
Feynman (http://www.scs-intl.com/online/)
Sagan (http://www.carlsagan.com/)
Dawkins (http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/)
The Leakeys (http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/leakey.html)
Margaret Meade (http://www.mead2001.org/Biography.htm)
Watson (http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/watsoncrick.html)
Crick (http://www.nature.com/genomics/human/watson-crick/)
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (http://psy.ucsd.edu/chip/ramabio.html)


Fascinating personalities, each of them, and they stand out in their fields.

I can't believe most of you don't pick Maxwell, I think he ranks up there above everybody. Einstein would of never existed without his electromagnetic theories of light and field equations (bearing his name!), but hey thats what opinions are all about! :)

Anyways, here are my top three


1) Maxwell (for his theory's on electromagnetic waves/kinetic theory of gases)
2) Newton (all his mechanical physics, gravity and of course CALCULUS!)
3) Einstein (Relativity)

Some runner ups

Faraday (Magnetic Field research)
Bohr (Kicked started atomic theory)
Feynmen (QED research)

Its hard for me to say Feynmen is within these other guys ranks, but for the 21st century, he probably is one of the best thinkers we had.

Great question to ask, its interesting to see everybody elses picks. Over the history of recorded time, there have been some incredible minds. It's a wonder to think, when somebody gets done with an undergraduate physics degree or some engineering degree, you just learned what all these great minds took 1000's of years to construct in a matter of 4 years. Mindboggling.

SkinWalker, I think you'll find Bohr was around in the 20th Century!!!
But I think I know what u really mean by ur definition of 'Greats of our time'!

Yes I agree with cjmowery that Maxwell was one of the greatest. He would probably be 7th or 8th on my list and definitely in that elite group of the Top Ten!

Ha!... yeah, you are correct of course... he passed in the 60's I think.

I still consider him to be one of the great pioneers in the tradition of Newton, though... For some reason I always think of his work as being older.

I must say, however, that my favorite intellectual of all time is Da Vinci. It's hard to ignore his passion for everything! Art, science, etc. Thinkers like him are few and far between.

Can probably throw Aristotle in there too, now we're talking 300BC or around those parts. He may not of been the king of mathematicians, but he made contributions by systematising deductive logic. Which in those days, is about all they could hope for.

Cheers

I like the idea of a discussion of history’s greatest scientists, but like almost every other science forum on the ‘Net, discussions and threads of this nature are heavily skewed towards physicists.

What is it with everybody’s disproportionate worship of physicists? :confused:

The only biologists that anyone seems to know of are Darwin, Watson/Crick and Pasteur. Here are some biologists that deserve to be on the list alongside Einstein et al…


* Richard Dawkins
* Alexander Fleming
* Howard Florey
* Rosalind Franklin
* Stephen Jay Gould
* Ernst Haeckel
* J. B. S. Haldane
* Robert Hooke
* Robert Koch
* Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
* Barbara McClintock
* Gregor Mendel
* Alfred Russel Wallace

:D

Originally posted by Hercules Rockefeller
but like almost every other science forum on the ‘Net, discussions and threads of this nature are heavily skewed towards physicists. The only biologists that anyone seems to know of are Darwin, Watson/Crick and Pasteur.

Hey.... I mentioned Dawkins, too :cool:

I also mentioned the Leakey's and Margarat Meade.... :cool:

People always mention the physicists and biologists but forget about the anthropologists.............. ;)

I also mentioned a neurologist... fascinating fellow. I'm a big fan of Richard Dawkins' work and I'm re-reading one of his books this week. Another thread about being selfish reminded me about Dawkins' The Selfish Gene so I dug it out...

Originally posted by Hercules Rockefeller


What is it with everybody’s disproportionate worship of physicists? :confused:

:D

I think the original question was who is everybodies favorite scientist? I guess that depends on what your background is, I'm in school for EE and Physics, so most of my schooling deals with alot of Maxwell's/Einsteins/Faraday/Newton.. blah blah blah.. you know where I'm heading. If I was a Biologist/Geologist/Chemist I would clearly have different favorites. Plus all the others are more obscure for a reason, their impact was a little more obscure. But thats just my opinion. :)

Cheers

dwayne d.l.rabon

In no particular order:

(1) Galileo Galilei
(2) Sir Isaac Newton
(3) Charles Darwin
(4) James Maxwell
(5) Dwayne D L Rabon

How's that for an honor, Dwayne?

I guess that depends on what your background is, [/B][/QUOTE]





Does that mean that most of the people on here (or at least who have replied) are physicists ???

No, not at all, but depending on what somebody has gone to school for, or maybe their own personal interests. Hey, it's all opinions, I don't even know who some of those people are people listed, because they are chemists, or biologists, that's not in my field of interest, that's all.

I think alot of people know, or pick people that are related to physics because it is the broadest and most far reaching science.

And because of that, physicists become much more famous and well known than their chemicistry and biology counterparts.

Bob Bakker, cause he's the perfect "I'm a crazy scientist who lives in a van" sterotype. And he's very smart.

I agree with most of the names already presented but would like to mention Karl Popper (http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~tkpw/)'s contribution
as one of the most important influences on modern science.
__________________
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

1. Nicola Telsa

http://www.teslatheband.com/

2.Thomas A. Edison

http://www.thomasedison.com/

3. Benjamin Franklin

http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/inventor/inventor.html

4. Marie Curie

http://www.aip.org/history/curie/

5. Leonardo da Vinci

http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/LeoHomePage.html

E O Wilson owns all these punks you guys mentioned. I'm pretty sure he beat hawking in an arm wrestle and urinated on einsteins grave, twice.
E O is definately my favourite, he's interested in all that bio-diversity stuff I am, actually he discovered bio-diversity and coined the phrase so yeah he's definately my main man. :cool:

Wow,....you have favrioute scientists........................................ .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .............................................Isnt that NeRdIsH

Stephen Wolfram shows a lot of promise, I reckon

My favorite scientist is Carl Sagan, he brought science to the people, and disproved the stereotype of science being boring and uninteresting. He's my inspiration and a major reason why I'm going into astronomy.