Most Influential Scientist of All-Time (#1)

Most influential scientist (#1)

  • Stephen Hawking

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Thomas Edison

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Max Planck

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Henry Cavendish

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Nicolaus Copernicus

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Louis Pasteur

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Michael Faraday

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Timothy Berners-Lee

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Watson & Crick

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Alexander Fleming

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Alexander Graham Bell

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • James Clerk Maxwell

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    56

Jumptheshark

Rebooting myself
Oct 12, 2003
99,857
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Somewhere on Uranus
At least no one voted for Edison


mostly because he stole most of his inventions and is he not a scientist in the sense of the word?

I still say based upon the wording of the question that is what is causing the confusion

"who was the most important scientist of all time"

the word influential is causing the problem

As for my comments on Feynman? Look into the Manhattan project and his influence on that and then his involvement in the shuttle esplosion
 
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PuckSeparator

Registered User
May 18, 2014
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Check Republik
I guess Newton, but he had an equal in Leibniz (more or less). From a personal perspective I'd vote for those quantum mechanics dudes, Planck, Schrodinger, Fermi, etc.. We wouldn't even posting on here if it wasn't for them and their out of the box thinking.

HM: Maxwell.

Most overrated: Einstein
 

Xelebes

Registered User
Jun 10, 2007
9,013
595
Edmonton, Alberta
Went with Archimedes because he determined there was procedure to phenomenon, and because there was procedure he could use mathematics to describe phenomena, especially phenomena of movement. Much of his formulas were not improved on until Newton and Liebniz together discovered the solution for handling multiple movements at once within a single phenomenon.
 

GellMann

Registered User
Dec 16, 2014
4,281
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Lancaster NY
Galileo
Faraday
Newton
Einstein

all equally as important
Pretty good, though I don't have Faraday quite on this list.

Gauss and Euler were incredible, but probably count more as mathematicians? Emmy Noether would then be up there as well.

Tesla does not belong on this list of options in general. He is an inventor, not a scientist, and was actually almost pseudo-scientific at times, and is incredibly overrated by his weird cult-following that attributes mythical things to him.
 
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GellMann

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Dec 16, 2014
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It's also my take that Einstein is not overrated despite claims that seem to be valid on the surface, and that Edison was completely fine and nowhere near the evil dude he's made out to be.
 

Cloned

Begging for Bega
Aug 25, 2003
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Pretty good, though I don't have Faraday quite on this list.

Gauss and Euler were incredible, but probably count more as mathematicians? Emmy Noether would then be up there as well.

Tesla does not belong on this list of options in general. He is an inventor, not a scientist, and was actually almost pseudo-scientific at times, and is incredibly overrated by his weird cult-following that attributes mythical things to him.

Inventors are industrial/applied scientists.
 

Cloned

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Aug 25, 2003
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Which is why I didn't mention Edison - Tesla was an inventor who was at times demonstrably anti-science, which for me wipes out his claim to the title of "scientist."

He was also definitely very well versed in the application of actual science in most of his inventions. No one's perfect.
 

PromisedLand

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Dec 3, 2016
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Pretty good, though I don't have Faraday quite on this list.

Gauss and Euler were incredible, but probably count more as mathematicians? Emmy Noether would then be up there as well.

Tesla does not belong on this list of options in general. He is an inventor, not a scientist, and was actually almost pseudo-scientific at times, and is incredibly overrated by his weird cult-following that attributes mythical things to him.

Fair enough

The way I see it

- if Gallileo didn’t work on falling bodies (also let’s not forget the telescope ;))

- newton would not have been able to have his laws of motion and then come up with the concept of gravity. Not to forget the invention of Calculas ;)

- and without newton’s work; Einstein would not have been able to change the landscape of physics by defining what is gravity and curvature of space/time

- and I really should have also listed quantum mechanics folks like shrodinger; without whom modern world as we know it with all the gizmos might not have been possible

I do hope that einstein’s wish comes true to have a one unifying theory that ties in quantum mechanics with macros of the universe. The probabilities associated with quantum mmechanics do freak me out a bit lol :laugh:

P.S. only reason I listed Faraday was because of the discovery of one of the most important force the electromagnetic force ;)
 

Cloned

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Aug 25, 2003
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Fair enough

The way I see it

- if Gallileo didn’t work on falling bodies (also let’s not forget the telescope ;))

- newton would not have been able to have his laws of motion and then come up with the concept of gravity. Not to forget the invention of Calculas ;)

- and without newton’s work; Einstein would not have been able to change the landscape of physics by defining what is gravity and curvature of space/time

- and I really should have also listed quantum mechanics folks like shrodinger; without whom modern world as we know it with all the gizmos might not have been possible

I do hope that einstein’s wish comes true to have a one unifying theory that ties in quantum mechanics with macros of the universe. The probabilities associated with quantum mmechanics do freak me out a bit lol :laugh:

P.S. only reason I listed Faraday was because of the discovery of one of the most important force the electromagnetic force ;)

The beauty of science is that each generation builds upon the previous one.
 
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GellMann

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He was also definitely very well versed in the application of actual science in most of his inventions. No one's perfect.
In a very engineering sense, yeah. I don't mean to make it sound like I hate the guy (I even built his coil for fun) but I definitely reflexively push back on a lot of the popularity he gets (and a visit to the "Nikola Tesla facebook page would quickly show you why). But if Maxwell's equations were even developed when he was doing his stuff, I bet anything he didn't know how to use them. And his bizarre takes on relativity were stupid.
 

PromisedLand

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The beauty of science is that each generation builds upon the previous one.

Yup!!!!

Now if only human beings on the planet could do the same thing as a whole so that we can leave behind a better world for our children than we inherited - that would be progress!!!

Someone send a memo to Trump :laugh:

;)
 

Cloned

Begging for Bega
Aug 25, 2003
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In a very engineering sense, yeah. I don't mean to make it sound like I hate the guy (I even built his coil for fun) but I definitely reflexively push back on a lot of the popularity he gets (and a visit to the "Nikola Tesla facebook page would quickly show you why). But if Maxwell's equations were even developed when he was doing his stuff, I bet anything he didn't know how to use them. And his bizarre takes on relativity were stupid.

To be fair though, most revolutionary scientists had some bizarre theories. Some were only bizarre for their time and were eventually proven true, others were actually bizarre. Those type of people tend to think way, way, WAY outside of the box. And when you do that, sometimes you look silly 100 years in the future.
 

GellMann

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Dec 16, 2014
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Lancaster NY
Fair enough

The way I see it

- if Gallileo didn’t work on falling bodies (also let’s not forget the telescope ;))

- newton would not have been able to have his laws of motion and then come up with the concept of gravity. Not to forget the invention of Calculas ;)

- and without newton’s work; Einstein would not have been able to change the landscape of physics by defining what is gravity and curvature of space/time

- and I really should have also listed quantum mechanics folks like shrodinger; without whom modern world as we know it with all the gizmos might not have been possible

I do hope that einstein’s wish comes true to have a one unifying theory that ties in quantum mechanics with macros of the universe. The probabilities associated with quantum mmechanics do freak me out a bit lol :laugh:

P.S. only reason I listed Faraday was because of the discovery of one of the most important force the electromagnetic force ;)
Quite a good layout. And it's not that Faraday was undeserving, that might not be fair to me. I just kinda worship the other three :P

QM is interesting, because there is no one guy that had as much influence as an Einstein or Newton did. Nobody pulled QM out of the f***ing blue in such a manner as that it might not have existed for 100 years without them, as was the case with Newton and Einstein. But there's no doubt that Fermi, Dirac, Schwinger, Schrodinger, Planck et. al. were absolute giants.
 
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GellMann

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Lancaster NY
To be fair though, most revolutionary scientists had some bizarre theories. Some were only bizarre for their time and were eventually proven true, others were actually bizarre. Those type of people tend to think way, way, WAY outside of the box. And when you do that, sometimes you look silly 100 years in the future.
Also true, but I think every no-BS scientist on this list had far greater reverence and understanding of their field and of the scientific method than Nikola did.
 

Cloned

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Aug 25, 2003
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Also true, but I think every no-BS scientist on this list had far greater reverence and understanding of their field and of the scientific method than Nikola did.

That's fair, but it was more of a Wild West as far as scientific method and reverence were concerned during the time Tesla was practicing his craft. Not everyone was on the same page all the time.
 

PromisedLand

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Quite a good layout. And it's not that Faraday was undeserving, that might not be fair to me. I just kinda worship the other three :P

QM is interesting, because there is no one guy that had as much influence as an Einstein or Newton did. Nobody pulled QM out of the ****ing blue in such a manner as that it might not have existed for 100 years without them, as was the case with Newton and Einstein. But there's no doubt that Fermi, Dirac, Schwinger, Schrodinger, Planck et. al. were absolute giants.

Have you seen stuff from Neil degrasee Tyson? That guy is a huge Newton fanboy :laugh:

He has interesting videos on YouTube
 
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GellMann

Registered User
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That's fair, but it was more of a Wild West as far as scientific method and reverence were concerned during the time Tesla was practicing his craft. Not everyone was on the same page all the time.
Also fair.

I'd probably never say Tesla's name again, especially not in a negative light, if my friends didn't constantly share stoned statuses about how the entire world would be running on free wireless electricity if he hadn't been assassinated by the new world order.
 
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Cloned

Begging for Bega
Aug 25, 2003
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Also fair.

I'd probably never say Tesla's name again, especially not in a negative light, if my friends didn't constantly share stoned statuses about how the entire world would be running on free wireless electricity if he hadn't been assassinated by the new world order.

This is hilarious but so true. His cult of personality has grown to massive proportions.
 

AfroThunder396

[citation needed]
Jan 8, 2006
39,053
22,923
Miami, FL
I chose Darwin because he completely changed the framing of science. No longer were we God's enlightened children, but rather ordinary mammals who just happened to have the right suite of traits at the right time.

The way he was able to divorce reason from rhetoric IMO laid the groundwork for the scientific advancement seen in the 20th century. Science would have still happened without him of course, but I think he really changed the framing and context of science in a way that no other scientist has.
 

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