Friday offtopic: Your top-5 scientists

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Here's a Friday offtopic thread that isn't about kittens. :)

In your mind, who are the top scientists and/or mathematicians that you think understood, or at least had the best glimpse of the inner workings of the universe with most clarity?

I think, apart from the most obvious answer Einstein, Newton comes to mind immediately, and Gauss, Laplace, Euler and Maxwell are also up there. But from what I know of them, they didn't have Newton's quantity of high-quality achievements (comparable quality), so I place them all a bit lower than him. Sure, quantifying genius and contribution is a futile task, but still. Since we're going to entertain the notion.

I'm not entirely sure if Descarte's influence in maths and physics is comparable to the above, but given his philosophical writings, I think that would compensate for any "shortcomings" (if we could speak of such a thing in the world of science anyway).

Along with the above-mentioned, I'd also include Copernicus, Leibniz and Crick. And from ancient times: Thales, and Alhazen who basically invented the scientific method. Of the now-living: Hawking, who's been devoted to unifying all the principles of physics (but then, who isn't - this seems to be the Holy Grail of modern science). And let's not forget the pleiad of science popularizers, from Sagan of the near past, to today's gurus like Tyson, Greene, even Nye et al.

Thoughts?

Comments

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

I'd add Turing and Bohr there. They both launched scientific revolutions that transformed human society.

[garote]

Well, there's influence, and then there's clarity. I'm a fan of good ol' Stephen Hawking for his conception of the workings of the universe. Sure, he has the benefit of a long history of scientists laying groundwork, but I find his insights quite interesting and his books quite approachable.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Gödel, Wittgenstein, and Turing for pointing out and confirming the limits of logic and knowledge. Kripke, Teilhard, for understanding the nature of the quantum universe well before the physicists. Aristotle for the foundations of Modal logic, which also anticipates the multiverse. Dirac-Schrödinger-Heisenberg as a single, though collective, entity. Darwin....Ooer missus! The list could be as long as your arm. :)

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I love Gödel, but I think people mis-read the implications of the incompleteness theorem.

If I could put it into plain English as succinctly as possible, I'd say...

"To be generally useful, any language has to be flexible and recursive, and given such recursive flexibility, you can always construct within it an irresolvable paradox."

Is that a limitation of Logic? Or of any language we use to process logic? And is there a substantive distinction between those two things?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Is that a limitation of Logic? Or of any language we use to process logic? And is there a substantive distinction between those two things?

As far as I understand it, it is a limitation of logic, not just of the language we use to process logic. And there is a distinction between these things, the language and the raw logic, if not a substantive difference. Russell's set paradox really starts my appreciation of the limitations of Logic, then along comes Ludwig...

Have you read Gödel's formalisation of Anselm's Ontological argument?

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Just wiki-ed it. I will have to ponder over the formal modal logic before I develop an opinion.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Democritus

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Only ancient scholars. So quaint!

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

We are dwarves, standing on the shoulder's of giants.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I was pretty iffy on the nitty gritty math of evolution, until I read Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" (Second edition, from 1989) and he put things into a Game Theory context.

(*Edit* After posting, I just realized I mis-read your topic, and was trying to think of a Scientist that had MADE MY glimpse of the inner workings of the universe better. But immagonna leave it anyways. )

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

My personal best are Richard Feynman, mainly because he's the one who got me into science and physics more than his actual contribution to the field; and James Clerk Maxwell for his contribution to maths. Also Georges Lemaitre and Nicola Tesla. I used to be a fan of Thomas Edison until I found out about him killing elephants in the "war of the currents" with Nicola Tesla.