Who are the Top Ten Scientists?

From Us perspective,

Frank Crowe

Herbert Hoover

Jonas Salk

George Westinghouse

Alexander Fleming

John Roebling

Michael Faraday

Plus the three guys who invented the cell phone in 1963 but, thinking it an unspeakable evil, smashed the prototype and burned their notes, thus saving the world for a quarter of a century.

I am a mad Scientist does that count? No OK I know of one and I saw him in the cafeteria at CALTECH where I used to work in the late 70's. Dr and Professor Steven Hawking. He was in a wheelchair could not feed himself an assistant fed him and I was about 20-30 feet away and did not know who he was at the time. Now he is considered one of the top scientist in the world. He was probably lecturing at CALTECH at the time. He teaches at Cambridge, England now.

Ten Great Scientists

1. Isaac Newton
2. Sir Francis Bacon
3. Nicolas Carnot
4. Paul Dirac
5. Nicolai Tesla
6. Alexander Fleming
7. Louis Pasteur
8. Johannes Kepler
9. Alan Turing
10. Edward Jenner

Now only Tesla and Newton from my short list have been honored by their names becoming standard units. I deliberately avoided using any of the other greats who have been so honored. But I just couldn't omit these two. I listed the others so that people could look these people up on Wikipedia or Google to see how they've helped humanity. For an example, without Sir Francis Bacon codifying the scientific principles, science may have foundered without a clear regiment. (Yes, somebody else could've and would've eventually done it without him. He also, like all of us, stood on the shoulders of others. But he did do it.)

Nice to meet a fellow Leicester native on the web

Codey

Waaaay cool . All these poor guys don't know our expression ' 'luv a duck' !Yee-haw for Leicester

Galileo, Kepler, Brahe and Newton.

Maxwell, Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac

Lister, Pasteur, Fleming

Oops, that's thirteen

Telford, Watt, Brunel, R.J. Mitchell, Davy, Stephenson.

Turing, Wozniak

Only eight engineers come to mind,

It wouldn't be the person who posted this, would it: LOOKING FOR A HYDRAULIC CONTROL VALVE OF SOME SORT

WelllllGeezzz tanks Lynlynch, but don't count me as a brainaic engineer!!!! LOL

That geezer wot flew the kite in the thunder storm.
Yup Bill Cody that's the dude
No...that's not Wright... who was it said Franklin my dear I don't give a dam.... that must've been Hoover shurely?

Del

Been at the catnip again, haven't you.

Actually, LOOKING FOR A HYDRAULIC CONTROL VALVE OF SOME SORT is a very well thought out post and didn't deserve my earlier jab.

Ben Franklin is one of my heroes.

"The French they are a curious race.
They fight with their feet,
and f%#k with their face."

--Ben Franklin

If you pay me good money, I can maybe get you a pic. 20 miles or so, and with my mobile phone cam it won't be good, but heck I'll risk it. What time does the race start ? Come to think of it, you may have to pay me not to post a pic !

Have you read 'Fart Proudly'? One of my favorite essays by my all time favorite American icon.

He was brilliant, curious and unrestrained. I grudgingly left him off my list, and now I wish I hadn't.

"That geezer wot flew that kite in a thunderstorm"

...you sound like Ali G hahahaha

1. Mom 2.Dad 3.Mom and Dad throwing stuff at each other. 4.Me with a rock on a hill. 5.My brother found a stick to stick on a stump. 6.Only bankers really love more zeros. Normal people want 9s. (Check the Pet Theories Thread.)

7.don't know who invented the bicycle, but now I want to. 8. Think it was French guys making furniture who had files. 9. Fred the Deerslayer wore Bambi home in the snow. 10. Willie the Witch doctor, and Mike, and Susan who sniffed around and watched birds. P.S. The wheel wasn't much without the axle.

Great list:

I think the guy who mastered fire must have been a pre-requisite to <1.>.

Supplement A

1a. Inventor of Indoor Plumbing (try living without it).

2a. Inventor of Fajitas, Tacos al Carbon, Migas con Pico de Gallo, Pizza With All The Trimmings and that fabulous Pork Bulgoki they serve at Korea House, Austin, Texas.

3a. Inventor of The Weekend.

4a. Inventor of Singing Beach, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts in the morning where I saw my first Green Flash.

5a. Inventor of The Margarita-on-The-Rocks-With-Salt, por favor.

6a. Inventor of the Thong Bikini. And Summers at the Beach.

7a. Inventor of Shiner Bock (available exclusively in Texas).

8a. Inventor of The White Stuff in the Middle of an Oreo.

9a. Inventor of Good Friends.

10a. Inventor of Everything.

6a - I'll agree as long as we're talking about WOMEN wearing them, not men.

7a - Shiner Bock is also available in Louisiana, along with the best coffee and food in the world.

10a - Amen. All glory to Him.

How about Chester Carlson? Inventor of Xerography (think copy machines). I don't know what our office would do without them. It's amazing how much paper we use since our company implemented it's paperless office policy.

"It's amazing how much paper we use since our company implemented it's paperless office policy."

Kinda like countries having the word Democratic in their names aren't?

"It is better to be important, than famous." It is most relevant and eye opening assertion about scientific platforms, most people who do much less than fundamental contribution pose much but real worker do not need any publicity. Definitely the work automatically come up but for a time being unwanted propositions hamper the scientific worship or zeal. Basically scientific zeal is natural in any one and such people only add new standards in science and technology. To be enifineer or scientist seems immaterial but the substance that matters is a zeal which wings up for doing remarkable. Go back to amounts of sacrification, pains, torture during IDEA of survismeter. Here IDEA offers Initiation, Development, Execution, Application. It was not for becoming famous but a real zeal was to do something in life. The curiosity to be famous is for those who do no have real zeal but pose only.

"I myself am hard pressed to name ten scientists, or ten engineers who have succeeded so well as to materially change our lives for the better"

Again it is remarkable and commendable too because outcome of a real scientsits definitely bring a materail change in the life of people. In this context, the survismeter is boon to environment and material sciences for characterization with 95% saving of the resources. Also it is a great asset to study volatile and pesticides etc

I'll submit this then go hide behind a rock.

In no particular order;

Nicolaus Otto
Alan Turing
James Watt
Nikola Tesla

Leonardo da Vinci

Wernher Von Braun

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Mikhail Kalashnikov
Eric Laithwaite

Joseph Whitworth

Robert Hooke

I know it's 11 but I had trouble choosing, I also had trouble getting the names to space evenly so the 'grouping' has no significance.

You forgot Frank Whittle...
but then again, everyone forgets Frank Whittle.

The guy that strung the first bow....now, that was some product development. Hmmm I wonder if they had marketing men in those days?
" Hey uggg,you just gotta see our latest anti sabretoothed tiger, pointed projectile deployment system. Incorporating stealth technology..." (that means we've taken off the bells and whistles)
Del

Where doth this naively "guest" hide that mocks the fun and frivolity of our favored feline one. Bring me a hammer so that I might smite this fowl chicken and turn him into respectable Matzo Ball soup for all to savor. Nay, let me use the hammer to convert him into the same state as the late iron bathtub. Maybe my rage though blinds me, for I was not the one so offended. Del, let fly they bolt upon this contemptible creature.

Well I spent all day sitting in a hospital while my Mother in Law was being checked up prior to an operation.
Which do you think was most fun? Which was 'better' ?

I would dispute your verdict of 'Completely unfunny', If you wish to substantiate that, you must identify the parts which you think were supposed to be funny, and if you can do that then you have defeated your own argument.
Maybe your sense of humour is different from mine, it doesn't make either 'better'.
But as a concession to your sense of humour I shall try something in a different vein by suggesting you stick your head up a dead bear's bum...
Was that funnier?
I await a reasoned response with bated breath.... indeed I'm a master bater.
Or doesn't self deprocation fit into your lexicon of humour?
(You may need help with some of the longer words in this post)...Ooooh look sarcasm too, something for all tastes....although hopefully all you are tasting at the moment is dead bear...

Anyhow, the development of the bow as an effective hunting weapon must be up there as an engineering achievment. How about the first guy to make a returning boomerang? Are you sure you are clever enough to notice the serious content in my posts?
Del

hopefully all you are tasting at the moment is dead bear...

shouldn't that be 'dead bear anus'? Possibly 'with chunks'?

I want to come out swinging for you, but I know you and your collection of homemade weaponary will overcome... I've got your back anyway, just in case!

And by the way:

I've had dinner with Frank Whittle's PhD tutor. That was when Dr Whittle was poorly. They're both dead now.

_{^{That'll fox the Cat and the Squirrel who're trying to guess my age.}}

My additions are:

Marie Curie

Rosalind Franklin. The story is she actually worked it out first, but her "photos" were stolen from her desk by the professor and passed to Crick & Watson. The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Watson, Crick and Wilkins was made after Franklin's Death. The maximum number that can share a Nobel is 3 and they must all be living at the time of the award.

All the other women scientists who have put up with cr@p from their male counterparts to get us where we are today.

Hi Rose,

I am older than you, but WTH who cares when you are 70+.

I just got a new security system, and it is by some of the greatest inventors, and they are Smith an Wesson, and if that does'nt work I'll use the Browning Automatic.

They worried that someone would missuse the Atom Bomb. Mr. friend, Dr. Larry November, astrophysist, is the greater inventor of the 21st century. He has solved the problem of containing a sustainable fusion reacton. He did it with mathematics, too. Get ready for super cheap electricity.

Oh, that right, you people are not allowed security systems on the other side of the pond.

Best to You,

Karl Mayr

Daylight Rolladen Systems

Tularosa, New Mexico

Who cooked the dinner ?

For additional fun, you might like to check out the fate of Mr Curie.....run down by a carriage......wife goes on to win fame.hmmm.

The catering company.

Really ??! I hadn't heard that. Hmmm. Sauce for the goose....

It was just one of those mildly entertaining facts I heard. Story goes, they'd been working together....just before publishing he bit the cobbles (so to speak). Mr's C went down in history as the true/only discoverer. etc.

"- Marie Curie, discoverer of uranium and with her husband Pierre also discovered radium, was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, one in physics and one in chemistry. Marie and her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie (the second woman to ever win a Nobel Prize) died of leukaemia, because they did not know of the dangerous properties of uranium. Pierre was killed by a runaway horse."

Well, that pretty much sums up blokes for ya

Most who would remember Whittle should also include von Ohain, just like most who would remember Turing, should include Zuse

Kalashnikov stole the idea from the german model of MG. Get him out of the list.

My quick list, in no particular order except roughly chronological is

Newton, Newcomen, Watt, Trevithick, IK Brunel, Faraday, Kelvin, Maxwell, Rutherford, Tesla.

among many, many others

Cheers........Codey

I would have to say Nikola m Tesla is a heavy #1.....without his AC invention introduced by Westinghouse Electric, we would all be stuck with Edisons' DC.

Anonymous.

I've always like Frank Zappa's lyrics... applied science just leads to more appliances. People who have made the world a better place with technology or discoveries is a tricky one to call. As for my personal list...

Whoever invented fire, the wheel, women, beer, sunscreen... Copernicus, Louis Pasteur, Maxwell, Einstien... and Al Gore for inventing the internet.

And we'd probably still be doing pretty good if all we had were the first five... but the internet sure makes me smile

Bah, humbug! This thread comes up every so often and the answers are the same but still; the general population doesn't care. In the days of Brunel and Edison technology was practically worshipped as the means to improve the world. Then things shifted to physics as Bohr and Oppenheimer figured out nukes. Finally things swung to rocketry with von Braun and NASA. Then the luddites and nimbys took over as people realized that engineers and scientists were human and made mistakes. Now we're almost derided as the cause of global warming. But people still want the lights to come on when they flip the switch....

This is why fame and fortune don't often come to engineers any more. We've become the applicances.

What about Adm. Hyman Rickover (sp?), father of the nuclear navy? Wasn't he an engineer????

Surely Civil engineers Wang, Salmon, Gaylord should be included??? Terazhaghi????

Please pardon my poor spelling of names.......

Dont forget Darcy

I hear Darcy's is a nice place.

heh,heh,heh, heh heh, you said wang.

Ummm, we mustn't forget to name Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Without them we wouldn't be sitting here mashing our PC keyboards would we now?

Neither Jobs nor Gates were engineers. Well, maybe Jobs was but rumor has it Woz wuz the brains of the outfit.

All the rest of the stuff Jobs stole from Xerox.

If it weren't for Bill Gates, we wouldn't be collectively spending over a million man-hours each day worldwide finding workarounds for Windows bugs and trying to recover from the more serious disasters they cause. That's a lot of lost productivity. A whole lot.

Keep Jobs. Nix Bill.

Hi Engineer Fans,

I list them from best to better:

Pastuer - invented the phrase, "Ask not what your country can do for you..."

and without vacines, there would be no scientists. Yes, and many

thought him wacko, since mice evolved by spantaneous generation. Germs

being transmitted by the air?, come on, get real. His inventions paid off

the National debt (wish you were here now), Pastuerized wine.

Michaelangelo - invented the heliocopter and much more

DeVinci - who started the Rennisance and painted the Last Supper with sureptious

connotations.

Einstien - figured out the most simple equation E= mc2 for energy, and much more.

Archimedis - discovered specific volume, and was so excited that he ran down the

street in his birthday suit shouting, "Eureka, I have found it."

Tesla - everyone knows what he did. Did he invent lightening too?

Lemnitz - invented the AC motor in his head

Edison - not always right (DC power transmission), but never gave up on the light

bulb

Hoover - who put Hoover Dam into motion long before the Great Depression,

but got the blame for it.

Crapper - invented the flushing toilet.

Sir John Harrington invented the flushing toilet but Thomas Crapper put it together in the form we recognise now.

Michaelangelo - invented the helicopter

I thought that was DaVinci

Edison - not always right (DC power transmission), but never gave up on the light

bulb

High voltage Direct Current has been used for awhile , avoids synchronization problems between grids, and if you pump it up high enough, apparently less transmission losses over long distances, that reactive electric thingie problem. So that edison dude was onto something , but for the wrong reasons. I might be remembering this wrong but he had a plan for
dc service to your house , if you didn't live more than 50' from the powerplant and you didn't need to electrocute any elephants or orangutans.

You probably remember the old "reddy Kilowatt", mascot and the Westinghouse slogan, " Doctors, housewives and farmers agree,

the best way to kill an orangutan is AC"

Ding, ding. Oops, time for my meds.

Packdrill

Poor old Topsy . I'm wondering if there's a connection to the expression 'topsy-turvy', but have so far not thought of one.

As I recall, there was something about sub-stations for those that lived more than 50' from the generator and the biggest problem was that the voltages required to make the system function were exceedingly high and therefore 'less safe' than AC (Score one for Nikola!)

As mentioned earlier, the wheel was a great contribution to engineering. I would however like to add the fulcrum for mechanical leverage. Without either, the other is less.

MRH

How much less? Are we talking Clearance Sale here?

I agree.

Inventors of

Wheel,

Fulcrum,

Fire,

paper

shelter (home of grass)

knife

pots (earthen)

Cooking

were the real engineers.

My list would be (in no particular order, and vastly incomplete since I limited it to 10):

Archimedes

Galileo

Newton

Pasteur

Mendel

Salk

Tesla

Nobel

Gutenberg

Carver

Some of these folks are on my list because of what they made, some for the way they did things or the impact they had on the way science/engineering is done, and some for the obstacles they overcame in their efforts to enlighten the world, and some for more than one of these reasons.

It is difficult to pic top ten scientists covering more than three hundred years. Except for Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein the difference between the top scientists are so small that fair judgement is based on individual choice not a scientific representation. In my opinion followings are the top ten scientists of all time.

Isaac Newton The greatest scientist of all time. He developed the theory of

universal gravitation, laws of motion,built the first practical

reflecting telescope, using prism decompose the white light into

many colors from the visible spectrum and developed differential

and integral calculus when science was at its infancy.

Albert Einstein Developed the theory of relativity.His equation E=mc² is a

Cornerstone of developing nuclear energy.

Louis Pasteur Pasteurization, Breakthrough in causes and preventation of diseases

Jonas Salk Developed Polio vaccination, saved millions of lives over the years.

Niels Bohr Atomic structure and quantum mechanics

Linus Pauling Received two Nobel Prizes, in chemistry on chemical bond& on Peace

James Watt Steam engine (brought industrial revolution in the world )

Marie Curie Pioneer in radioactivity. Received Nobel Prize in Chemistry & physics

Johannes Kepler Laws of planetary motion

Michael Faraday Father of Electricity. No formal education but best experimentalist

in science.

I am sorry to exclude prominent scientist like Rutherford, Plank,

Galileo, Heisenberg, Flory(father of polymer chemistry), Edison,

Tesla, Ben Franklin, Vant Hoff, Mendeleev and others.

Discovery of a new dish (eatable) is more important to human race than the discovery of a new star.

Please give me COMPLETE list of important (may not be known to many of us being not famous) scientists,/ engineers. I will select 10 from the list

Ok.

Kris, Del the cat, Blink, Sparkstation, bwire, Blink, cnpower, Nickname, europium, vermin, bhankiii, Randall, Moose, Milo, Hendrik, lynlynch, Jorrie, masu, Andy Germany, PWSlack, SaddleChariot, Bricktop, Chrisg288, Roger Pink, babybear.

Thanks for the list.

I will rate Del on top, as he discovers newer and newer ways to make us laugh.

(My point is it very difficult to give top 10, as even we will not be knowing all those great scientists/ engineers for the benefit of human race. We may be knowing only famous ones (as per terminology of OP) Then there is no point in making such list. (It will be injustice to all unknown importants)

ROFL - I think he wanted great Scientists, not post-rate ! All the same, Kudos on getting both data sets listed corrrectly in one list

My answer was only slightly tongue-in-cheek. In that list are, I'll bet, several very, very good scientists and engineers - we just don't know to recognize them. For example, Del doesn't seem to much like maths and probably doesn't often solve Castigliano, yet if I wanted advice on the elastic behavior of anisotropic materials, he would be near the top of my query list. In the same way, I would be surprised to see Blink receive a Nobel Prize for thermodynamics, yet I believe his calculations and observations about IC engines above anything I read in a textbook.

CR4 is indeed riddled with great minds. Incognito, lest they be swamped with direct help request from the masses. They are all exceedingly generous in sharing their knowledge (and wit) on CR4. Unfortunately my brain is just riddled with holes !

I didn't know Del did "elastic behavior of anisotropic materials", unless that's knowledge from baiting his mouse trap with layers of different types of cheese. He really shouldn't use a slice of crusty anisotropic Brie either, a cube of good old isotropic cheddar (Red Leicester) would be much better - it generally has no 'crust' to speak of, and is equally chewable in all directions