Greatest Scientist Ever???

[CHADS]

Paul Dirac created the most complete picture of quantumn mecanics .... but since your list overshadows him with heisenberg ...then newton wins convincingly every time.

[sanctus]

You asked about the best scientist. Well for me a scientist shoulld be a bit more open to the outer world and so paranoid as Newon is said to heve been (never wanting to publish his things).

But anyway is there something possible like the most important scientist? I don't believe it my classification stops by a group of most important ones and then it becomes hard to judge who influenced more bacause there are so many ways of influencing mankind: on the worldvies on the social comportment, on the technological level and so on...

[arkain101]

Well I say the greatest scientist there is, is the scientist behind matter, energy, and consciousness. So many things can explain how they got here and how they work, but only one thing can explain why there is this mascarade in the first place and my vote goes to that source field.

If we have to choose a mortal, I dont have a greatest pick, but I would Nikola Tesla and his inventions were so inovative that it is the only reason we live in the world we do today, I'm not sure if we would be where we are without him, because Edison was obsessed with DC and would never think about going ac. They paid Nikola Tesla a few $ per every horse power of electricity that was created. They said that if he was alive today he would be richer than the whole world combined. Literally he would own the world from his work. Except he wasnt that kind of man, he was honorable and generous.

[infamous]

Originally Posted by arkain101

If we have to choose a mortal, I dont have a greatest pick, but I would Nikola Tesla and his inventions were so inovative that it is the only reason we live in the world we do today,

Even though he's not on the original list, I would agree that Tesla had an outstanding scientific mind. I personally would place him at the number two position because my overall choice would have to be 'Leonardo Da Vinci' ; Because his intellect was so far ahead of his time................Infy

[jkellmd]

Originally Posted by EWright

Newton, without a doubt. It isn't even open to argument.

Even though he stole at least part of the credit for the inverse square law from Hooke, and can rightly only split credit for calculus with Leibniz? There is no doubt that his was a great mind, but he was lucky to have lived in the time that he did, with the RS getting off of the ground, and all.

Other moments in human history have been similarly charged with the presence of several great minds at once, collaberating. Manhattan Project, Vienna in the 18th century, Alexandria in late antiquity, Athens in 3rd-4th century BCE... Was Herophilus "better" than Erasistratus, or Fermi than Feynman?

[arkain101]

Tolstoy wrote; "men only learn when they're suffering". The question is; how much do you want to learn?

This is very true that we learn most things when suffering, oh the lessons I have been taught...

Suffering will eventually teach you how not to suffer, and when you learn this all things become blissful lessons.

[Bio-Hazard]

Originally Posted by infamous

my overall choice would have to be 'Leonardo Da Vinci' ; Because his intellect was so far ahead of his time.

I agree. Based on the fact that this man was in the 1500s, he focued mostly on the different sciences along with their artistic attribute. Without him a lot of things that we comprehend today wouldn't have been achieved. I assume if he were to exist today, he would find a new cure, biological specimen, or just create some new technology we don't have, just so he can draw it.

I question if he had eidetic memory which would have led him to a greater life of science in this age where the Internet community and information highway exists. Of course many people wonder about how people of the past would work in today.

___edit___
You know what, scratch that.
Washu is the greatest scientist ever!!

[Bo]

if the question is 'best scientist', then you could argue that the people who defined what we mean by scientiffic thinking should be on the list (I would say: Francis Bacon, Popper and Emanuel Kant)
but... lists like these are never complete.
hawking is definitely overrated;
Newton is a good one, but one can argue that he didn't fully realized what his resulst meant.
perhaps then Hamilton, for giving credit to unravel the underlying structure of newtonian mechanics?

Bo

[CraigD]

My vote is for someone not on the list, and a mathematician, not, technically, a scientist: Kurt Godel. His work on axiomatic incompleteness effectively ended the notion that Math and Science could every reach a state of (for lack of a better term) perfection.

[T0M]

Originally Posted by Racoon

Who IS the greatest scientist? Who influenced Mankind the most?Whose accomplishments do you admire? And Why???

I'm sorry but I feel like I have to redo your questions for almost no one answered more than one:

1) Who IS the greatest scientist?
2) Who influenced Mankind the most?
3) Whose accomplishments do you admire?
3b) And Why?

So,
1) I can't feel comfortable choosing one.
2) Darwin of course, that's unquestionable. We're even talking about mankind!
3) Me, myself, I admire Einstein the most.
3b) It's too relative to tell... lmao

T0M