Posted on 06/24/2014 6:41:08 AM PDT by Scoutmaster
But Aristotle? With his physics in which arrows fly straight then suddenly fall straight down when they run out "impetus"? How could he get that wrong??? He was the tutor to Alexander the Great and surely saw arrows flying in their parabolic arcs as the approximately correct physics Newton gave us predicts. He wasn't blind like Homer, how did he get that wrong? He also got quantification over empty families wrong in his formulation of logic
In that light, I'd put in the top category Euclid of Alexandria (c. 300BC), the father of Geometry and a predecessor to another needed for inclusion, Archimedes of Syracuse (280-212BC)! For millennia, children have learned Euclid's Elements and from his books has come REASONED learning, a prerequisite of all science. And if the above 2 ancient Greeks are not enough, let's add Pythagoras of Samos (570-495BC) as a candidate for the title of "Father of Mathematics!
Remember, there is a reason for Western Civilization being called a Greco-Roman-Judaic Civilization. And when you consider that all of these men did their work in an era preceding Indo-Arabic Numbers, it is even more impressive!
Howard Johnson was a big fan of Louis Pastuer.
Since this top 10 list is for scientists, it makes sense to me that Archimedes is not on the list. Archimedes was much more an engineer and less a scientist.
And he should be recognized for inventing nothing! What has made a larger impact on science than nothing?
Any Top Ten list without Robert Hooke’s name on it is worthless.
How about Honorable Mention for Lise Meitner? She only discovered Nuclear Fusion.
How about Shottkey? transistors anybody?
Thanks. That’s insightful and gives me some reading for the day.
How can you rate one of these scientist as “the best”? It’s like saying, which one song is “the best ever”?
They’re all good, all made critical contributions to the body of human knowledge.
And science doesn’t exist in a vacuum, don’t forget all the practical people that put the science discoveries to work - Tesla, Edison, even the Wright Brothers and Henry Ford.
Always saw edison and da vinci as engineers and not scientists - I’ll agree on copernicus
Surely you jest. Everyone knows it's Philosophy of the World by the Shaggs.
;)
Very clever nomination. In many ways his invention overall may be the most impacting invention over the last 100 years. Without it, we wouldn’t be looking at our computers right now.
Engineers are those who make scientist’s “dreams” come into reality. Claude Shannon comes to mind.
There are about 100 other scientist that could be in that list that aren’t because they didn’t have as good publicity as these folks.
Plank, Bohr, Dirac Sheldon Cooper...where are they?
Aristotle and Darwin really weren’t even scientists.
So the guy who invented beer doesn’t even get an honorable mention.......sad.
The guy who let you store the beer (Pasteur) IS on the list.
I nominate Lorenzo Avogadro. He actually discovered the basic nature of matter.
Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendeleev. That periodic table? Consider that there was no such thing as atomic theory when he did it. Mind-boggling.
I should clarify that. There was no such thing as theory of atomic structure when Mendeleev did his work. 1864.
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