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Greatest scientist ever? - Blazkovitz - 04-11-2020
I cannot choose between Copernicus, Newton and Darwin.
Copernicus - showed us our place in the Cosmos.
Newton - proved that reality works according to mathematical laws. His laws have immense practical applications.
Darwin - "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"
Since I could enumerate two reasons to honour Newton, perhaps he should be the greatest.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - sbarrera - 04-11-2020
Oh, I thought this was going to be a Fauci post.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - David Horn - 04-11-2020
(04-11-2020, 05:50 AM)Blazkovitz Wrote: I cannot choose between Copernicus, Newton and Darwin.
Copernicus - showed us our place in the Cosmos.
Newton - proved that reality works according to mathematical laws. His laws have immense practical applications.
Darwin - "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"
Since I could enumerate two reasons to honour Newton, perhaps he should be the greatest.
Since science builds on itself, unlike art that often takes tangents, it's hard to set the great works of any single scientist against those of another. In 1905, Einstein published his dissertation and four seminal papers on he photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy, all 4 more than adequate to trigger a Nobel Prize in Physics. He was 26, and just getting started. Does Einstein make the cut? Of course, but it's still impossible to say who is the singular Greatest Scientist of All Time.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - pbrower2a - 04-11-2020
(04-11-2020, 09:59 AM)David Horn Wrote:(04-11-2020, 05:50 AM)Blazkovitz Wrote: I cannot choose between Copernicus, Newton and Darwin.
Copernicus - showed us our place in the Cosmos.
Newton - proved that reality works according to mathematical laws. His laws have immense practical applications.
Darwin - "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"
Since I could enumerate two reasons to honour Newton, perhaps he should be the greatest.
Since science builds on itself, unlike art that often takes tangents, it's hard to set the great works of any single scientist against those of another. In 1905, Einstein published his dissertation and four seminal papers on he photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy, all 4 more than adequate to trigger a Nobel Prize in Physics. He was 26, and just getting started. Does Einstein make the cut? Of course, but it's still impossible to say who is the singular Greatest Scientist of All Time.
He does. His achievements may have seemed arcane at the time but they are now useful.
It's a pair, but Crick and Watson, by discovering the chemical nature of DNA, established the genetic language of life.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - Warren Dew - 04-11-2020
(04-11-2020, 05:50 AM)Blazkovitz Wrote: I cannot choose between Copernicus, Newton and Darwin.
Copernicus - showed us our place in the Cosmos.
Newton - proved that reality works according to mathematical laws. His laws have immense practical applications.
Darwin - "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"
Since I could enumerate two reasons to honour Newton, perhaps he should be the greatest.
I think it has to be Newton. While Darwin's contributions to biology could be argued to be as important as Newton's contribution to physics, Newton also invented integral calculus, which was important not only to physics, but to many other applications, including biology.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - pbrower2a - 04-11-2020
Another candidate -- Dmitri Mendeleyev for establishing the periodic law of the elements, without which chemistry is muck.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - Blazkovitz - 04-12-2020
Crick&Watson, Einstein and Mendeleyev definitely belong in the top league.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - pbrower2a - 04-12-2020
For scientific inquiry that has since had more of a cultural than scientific influence -- Sigmund Freud. People cannot now write quite like Dickens or Dostoevsky now that everybody is under the subtle, but inescapable, cultural influence of Freud.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - JasonBlack - 02-28-2022
(04-12-2020, 09:40 AM)Blazkovitz Wrote: Crick&Watson, Einstein and Mendeleyev definitely belong in the top league.
and Rosalind Franklin
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - pbrower2a - 02-28-2022
Does mathematics count as a science?
If so, then Euclid, Pythagoras, al-Kharwizmi, Cardano, Descartes, Euler, Gauss, Fermat, and Wiles (finally proved Fermat's Last Theorem).
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - beechnut79 - 05-07-2022
What about Marie Curie and Jonas Salk. The former discovered radium; the latter mastered the polio vaccine which has, for all intents and purposes, eradicated that dreadful disease.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - David Horn - 05-07-2022
The greatest scientist ever has to be one who ignited science as a field of endeavor. A good, though not perfect choice: Galileo Galilei. He, almost single handedly, challenged the church's hold on truth. Until that occurred, scientific advances were sanctioned for "right thinking" only, so anything controversial was stopped in its tracks. Of course, non-Western cultures didn't have the same constraints, but they also lacked the WEIRD culture that made science a force.
RE: Greatest scientist ever? - pbrower2a - 05-07-2022
(05-07-2022, 12:01 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: What about Marie Curie and Jonas Salk. The former discovered radium; the latter mastered the polio vaccine which has, for all intents and purposes, eradicated that dreadful disease.
I'd put Jenner above Salk for his inoculation for smallpox.