Greatest genius in history vote

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Straybow
No, it was that the Nobel for the year he published it was given to someone else. They later gave him the Nobel for his current work (photoelectric effect) because they can't award for past work. But everybody new it was really for relativity.

lol

nobel prizes (almost) always get awarded for things done decades before the prize

they are always done for past work, the award winner just has to be living...

also, the photoelectric effect work of Einsteins was done in his amazing year, 1905, which is (roughly) a decade before general relativity

Jon Miller

[Straybow]

Each committee interprets the rules their own way. Typically they name the current work as a "contribution to xxx" but everyone knows that some earlier work was more important but overlooked at the time. Sometimes they mention the earlier work as that from which the awarded work sprang.

Heisenberg was awarded "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen" but we know that allotropic forms of hydrogen are kinda insignificant compared to QM.

Crick and Watson were not working together in 1962 when they shared the Nobel with Maurice Wilkins. The Nobel committee cites specific work in x-ray diffraction of organic molecules in 1961-2 for Wilkins but not for Crick or Watson.

Nobels are not awarded posthumously. There was another partner with Crick and Watson doing x-ray diffraction studies on DNA, but she died before 1962.

[Straybow]

Hmmm, yeah, who knows what they were thinking for Einstein's award.

Politics.

[Jon Miller]

his 4 papers in 1905 were all very impressive, nobel award winning stuff

JM

[Jon Miller]

it has been said about GR that 10 years after Einstien introduced it, only 3 people (including Einstien) understood it...

so it makes sense that they didn't give him the award for GR (he had done some impressive work well before, deserving of a Nobel, and so they gave him one (independent of GR))

Jon Miller

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Straybow
No, it was that the Nobel for the year he published it was given to someone else. They later gave him the Nobel for his current work (photoelectric effect) because they can't award for past work. But everybody new it was really for relativity.

The photoelectric effect was published the same damn year as special relativity.

Get a clue.

[Ecthy]

SR

GR

(physics idiot)

[KrazyHorse]

Yes you are.

General relativity is a robust, elegant theory. I don't see your problem with it.

[Jon Miller]

this is suppose to be the year to celebrate Einstien's golden year (1905)



JM

[Ecthy]

It is celebrated that in Germany

[Whaleboy]

For me, it was a fight between Darwin and Newton. Both were consummate scientists and stunningly excellent practitioners of scientific method with equally profound discoveries and effects upon modern life. That's not to say that any other of the others were somehow lesser.... I think it's a fallacy to say that one genius can be "greater" than another, it's a minefield to even work out the paramaters for such a determination.

I can only answer for myself in that case, and the influence any given character from history has on myself. I could then have quite happily said Leonardo da Vinci, but then what of the likes of Archimedes, Shakespeare, or the likes of Melville or Poe?

I'm a scientific person, so it's really hard to decide between Newton and Darwin. It boils down then to which one would I rather associate with, and it would most likely be Darwin, since Newton was a bastard.

[Whaleboy]

Oh yes, the reason why it's not a three way fight between Darwin, Newton and Einstein? I just can't bring myself to forgive Einstein's a posteriori inclusion of his "cosmological constant"

[Ecthy]

NUEMANN!112two

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Da Vinci is possibly the single most overrated human being of all time.

[Ecthy]

How foten must I repeat myself, the most overrated mustest be teh Einstien