Who is the greatest scientist in the last 500 years?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
A lot of people chose Newton, I don't understand. His real claim to fame was his work on optics. James Clark Maxwell is at least as important Newton, if not more.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

[Zkribbler]

Newton.

And for all those who voted Newton & Einstein, the thread calls for a single scientist. No fair voting for two. Life is full of tough choices, but often you have no choice but to choose. [Now, what shall I have for breakfast? ]

[Rogan Josh]

Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Fermi, Dirac and Maxwell, not necessarily in that order. (And I suspect in 100 years time, people will add Witten to that list.)

If I had to pick one, I would pick Newton I think. His ideas really kicked everything off, and without him, where wuld we be now?

Einstein's Special Relativity wasn't that great really - if he hadn't come up with it someone else would have within 10 years I think. His GR on the other hand was amazing (although I am sure we would have GR by now too). It is pretty impressive that his Nobel prize wasn't for either GR or SR - it was for the photoelectric effect. It was such a shame that he never believed in Quantum Mechanics...

[KrazyHorse]

Hah. Rogan said exactly what I did about Einstein. Great minds think alike.

[Odin]

Tesla Had ADHD, you called him a wacko.
I have I ADHD, so am I a wacko?

I limited this to the last 500 years because the ancient philosophers didn't use the scientific method, so they aren't technically scientists.

[Sava]

me

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
If I had to pick one, I would pick Newton I think. His ideas really kicked everything off, and without him, where wuld we be now?

Not gravity, he merely expanded a bit on what had been developing since Galileo. Not Calculus, as Lebniz would have gotten it anyway. So only optics.

Got something to add there kitten?

[KrazyHorse]

Yeah, that you're full of ****e.

Universal gravitation was a quantum leap ahead of everybody else's thoughts. Kinetics ditto. Half marks for calculus.

If you'd bothered to actually read contemporary thinking on all three of those subjects you'd see the difference.

-KrazyHorse (who has read Principia and wrote a term paper on Newton for a course entitled "The Scientific Revolution)

[Urban Ranger]

Tough luck kitty, I had three full terms of History of Science, which covered the Scientic Revolution in there somewhere.

[KrazyHorse]

And I've had 35 physics and math courses and read the relevant source materials.

Nobody else even comes close in the scientific revolution.

The next to appear who halfway approaches Newton is Maxwell.

[MRT144]

and my **** is bigger than the both of yours!

[Sava]

I've had 36 physics and math courses and I wrote the relevant source materials

[KrazyHorse]

**** you. My **** is the biggest in the world.

Metaphorically, of course.

[Rogan Josh]

Not gravity, he merely expanded a bit on what had been developing since Galileo. Not Calculus, as Lebniz would have gotten it anyway. So only optics.

Hardly! Galileo and his orbits was nowhere near Newton's level. The big leap is in gravitation was realising that the apple falling and the planet's orbits were due to the same force. It may seem obvious now, but that is with 400 years of hindsight.

And his gravitation wasn't even the best bit - that goes to his three laws, which gave us a kinetic theory which lasted for centuaries.

I would also agree with Frogger that Maxwell was a genius. Do you realise that maxwell's laws are invariant under SR transformations, even although SR was discovered after Maxwell's equations?

[KrazyHorse]

That's because Einstein designed them that way.