Einstien

Top one in any category should be God / Mother Nature / Universe Laws (whatever you want to call it). We still struggle far behind to understand the world created around us, seen and unseen.

@Ovidiu, Scientist understand the various categories you listed. So is the best at understanding those categories?

I would go for Alfred Russel Wallace rather than Darwin…Would not want to get into controversies here but… i prefer Wallace for his incredible power to understand nature….Cheers…no offense to anybody…

@Niladri, they are both important to evolutionary theory; Wallace was a big supporter of Darwin's work. However, there are some baseline differences between the evolutionary theory they argued over:

Darwin's theory emphasized competition between species for survival and reproduction, whereas Wallace reference more environmental pressures that lead to adaptations to the specie's particular environment; both understood that environmental pressure dictates selection factors associate with making certain species more adept to survive.

However, Darwin got the point that adaptation only matters as much as its relationship to others in the same population, as far as reproduction is concerned.

Wallace is still easily one of the greatest biologist ever.

My female pick is Rosalind Franklin. She did the first X-rays of DNA, shared her notes with Watson and Crick that DNA is double stranded and triple helical, got no credit for the discovery, and likely died from her work. She died from cancer.

She is my favorite female scientist.

The greatest scientist that I personally know is Roy Black. He discovered both Interleukin converting enzyme, ie the first Caspase, TNF alpha converting enzyme, and was the scientist at Immunex behind bringing EMBREL to the marketplace. EMBREL is the first successful anti TNF therapeutic agent.

The greatest scientist of all may be EINSTEIN.

I agree with Thomas Mohr in that Leonardo Da Vinci gets my vote. He laid the foundation for so many others (in several areas of science and art) and changed the way that people viewed the world. Yes, Darwin's and Wallace's ideas helped formulate evolutionary theory, which forms our basic understanding of the diversity of life, but their contributions were incremental rather than revolutionary. I feel that Da Vinci was truly revolutionary and had to break the law on many occasions to achieve what he did--he took big risks to find out more when it would have been easy for a man in his position to play it safe.

I vote for Newton. As far as I know, he was right in everything he claimed (including corpuscular nature of light), he founded modern physics, by the way he invented calculus, explained gravitational force and discovered laws of motion which were valid for several hundreds of years. And although his laws have been made more precise today, they will never be wrong and they will remain to be an excellent approximation. I agree that Darwin was a great scientist, his understanding of evolution was a wonderful step. I am admirer of Einstein for his deep insight into the nature of geometry of the spacetime, I am admirer of Penrose. But for me Newton's discoveries were incomparable to all these things.

Some candidates

Maths: Euclid, Newton, (with a nod to Leibnitz for the shared invention of calculus), Riemann (differential geometry –tensors, prime numbers). Tempted to include Kurt Gödel but he didn’t make a big enough difference. Turing was, in current terms an engineer and applied mathematician – not inferior but a different category. Likewise Tim Berners-Lee for the Internet.

Physics (Ancient): da Vinci, Copernicus/Galileo

Physics (Modern): Einstein, Feynman (widely considered to be on a par with Einstein but with much better maths. Lost some of his best years working at Los Alamos during the war and was exposed to radiation at the end when sent to check that the U235 processors didn’t have dangerous (close to criticality) amounts of material in one vat (they did!), which may have initiated the tumour that eventually killed him.) de Broglie (I guess he represents QT but this was, unlike STR and GTR, more of a team effort.

Chemistry: Watson/Crick (but a few weeks/days interpreting someone else’s data is a cheap way to win.), Mendeléev (but his Periodic table was essentially empirical), Faraday ….. (As a chemist I cannot think of a chemist who made a genuinely subject-shattering discovery –maybe Jeffrey Brender can help.)

Biology: Darwin (with a nod to Wallace but it was Darwin who wrote it all up so convincingly and millions can’t be wrong when we speak of Darwinism and not Wallacism…..)

Medicine: Pasteur, Fleming (who saw what others must also have seen but who realized its significance), Florey (who lead the team that produced the first antibiotic to be used on a patient and set in train the development of antibacterial therapy that would save hundreds of millions of lives.)

Michael - I think you should produce crtieria for what defines a "scientist", criteria for eligibility and a list of subjects within which we should be confined. Then on a due day you can collect the list of candidates, eliminate those who fail the criteria and make a shortlist of the top 3 in each subject fro a final vote,

Why make all this effort? It's the kind of thing that Sciam love to publish!

@Stephen, I like your chronological dissection for physics. For physics you almost need three categories; so much has happen since Einstein's time. Very difficult to compare higgs to einstein.

Ancient: Newton, Greek Philosophers

Modern: Einstein, De Brogglie

Modern Modern: Witten, Higgs,

However, no questions asked. Greatest mathematician ever is Guass. With Euler being a strong second.

Watson/Crick were biologist; structural biology contribution; DNA more of a biological entity.

Medicine: Hilleman; he developed over 36 vaccines that cured various diseases. Saved more lives than any other scientist ever.

@Kadri, God plays dice, he is no scientist.

@ Scholtz; understandable choice. If I had to pick the greatest mathematical physicist ever, I would go with newton; most talents in those areas have either great mathematical or physical intitution; newton had both. However, I think even Higgs contribution stands to be greater from a physical standpoint.

@Da Vinci Lovers; I never thought of him as a scientist; more of as an engineer/painter. And I have always been a bigger fan of Michelangelo to be honesty; much better artist ;)k

@Moss; my favorite scientist is Francis Crick; so I do not approve of your choice ;). I always viewed her work as more "technical" aspect in the discovery of DNA. The actual Science, structure of DNA, was determined by Crick/Watson.

I also vote for Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps it would be good to divide our ratings into time periods?

As a chemist, I vote for Lavoisier (ancient era) and Schrodinger (modern era).

Hello all of You,

I admire many scientists including Hans Krebs, Einstein and many others. Too many to name. I also admire many musicians: Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods, also very many of them. But among musicians, I vote Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Some people will not consider musicians as scientists, but then music is all about waves. To me, they are physicists; but you may not agree.

yes.....Pasteur......... I ll vote for Louis Pasteur for discovering vaccination......a prevention of diseases. and he served and saved billions of trillions of lives.

@Sana

You are right, but, he invented technology, but science is about explaining processes and weighing hypotheses...

Dear Michael

Science have many branches and som of those are very distinct from each. Everyone can candidate one or more person in each fields but comparing whom with them is not correct.

Also, this selection is very dependent to the point of view of each person.

Please dissect the fields and then rebuild your question.

At the end:

In physics: Einstein

In biology: Darwin

In economy: John Nash

...

Biology: Darwin, Dobzhansky, Dawkins, Flegr... but I am biased towards evolution :-)

Sorry, I forgot Wallace...

Maybe not the "greatest" — supposing that such a classification might mean something.

But let me remind the "greatness" of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in his "Truth and Beauty" (1910), a book that combined permanently [at least] two cultural hemispheres, considered as separated before.

g

@Laquidara, is that science?

@All responders,

I just clarify what I mean by the greatest scientist.

A scientist is someone who understands/explains the physical world. However, I think the best way to judge a scientist is based on the contribution made to scientist; so the best scientist is the one whose scientific works have made the greatest impact on science. Marilyn Vos Savant has the Highest IQ on record that is alive. She probably has great capacity to understand the physical world. However, she has not contribute anything to any field. On the other hand, Higgs discovered the Higgs Boson/Higgs field which explains why particles have mass. Who is the greater scientist? I vote Higgs.

Leonardo may very well be the most multi-talented genius ever, however, I cannot name anything he has contributed to scientist.

This makes my case for Darwin being the greatest scientist. The theory of evolution has changed/explained biology unlike how any other theory has altered any other field. It is arguably the greatest theory in science.

Dear Michael,

It’s funny that Ljubomir Jacić and you asked about the same question at the same time as you already noticed for sure (see https://www.researchgate.net/post/Who_is_your_favorite_scientist_or_inventor_who_contributed_to_the_progress_of_civilization_Nikola_Tesla_was_one_of_them_and_he_is_my_favourite). I didn’t changed my mind in between, but I found interesting that some of us cited people rather involved in politics, and some others cited artists. This makes me question about the definition of science. Actually, I hesitated to mention Leonardo da Vinci, as he was a jack-of-all-trades who could paint or invent terrific machines with the same ease. That’s pretty impressive, and, in his case, it’s hard to draw a limit between art and science. He was a real visionary, and he makes me think to another great man, Jules Verne, who also had lots of imagination and was able to anticipate later scientific findings. After all, a great scientist has probably more imagination than average. The difference with sci-fi novelists is that he is able to substantiate and materialize his visions.

In that, I can understand that the answers to your question virtually go in all directions.

Regards, Sébastien

Okay Michael Mannen, then I will amend my previous statement.

I vote for Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for the introduction of calculation at the basis of the homonymous limit, then defined by Anderson, Stoner, and its inevitable consequences of what we know of the stellar dynamic principles.

And, occasionally, for writing the book "Truth and Beauty" (1910).

I hope this is consistent with what you asked for.

g

@Kury, His question asked for your favorite scientist/inventor. Francis Crick is my favorite, but his contributions are not anywhere close to Darwin's contributions, IMO. Clear up your confusion? And you still did not give a vote.

@G; saying he is the greatest scientist b/c of the Chandrasekhar limit is acceptable ;)

Michael – This question has made me think, for the first time, about what makes a scientist and a discovery.

First – I think we (all of us) are getting confused between the person and their achievement(s). The two most important theories in physics are relativity and quantum mechanics. But Einstein worked alone while many were involved in QMT and in developing the (still incomplete) ‘standard model’. I think Feynman would have got relativity if Einstein hadn’t but E did and it was too late for F. It gets harder to make a ground-breaking contribution as time goes on. Some (but not all) of the criticism of current medical research is unfair because, inevitably, we find and pick the low-hanging fruit, or find it lying in front of us, first. The remaining fruit is out of reach and we have to build ladders of understanding to get to it. Einstein was probably the best physicist of his era and maybe Feynman of his. Therefore I think we need to be more specific about what we are looking for. It’s your question – here are some suggestions for debate:

ACHIEVEMENTS

X) What discovery, theory or insight has made the greatest impact on science in its era?

Y) What discovery, theory or insight has made the greatest impact on the lives of people in its era?

PEOPLE

a) What person has made the greatest contribution to scientific* knowledge and understanding in their era?

*Not the application of science but original thought.

b) What person has made the greatest technical contribution to human health and well-being (not economic well-being) in their era?

c) Any ideas for another category?

[By “in their era” I mean taking into account the level of understanding/technology, the data available and the experimental techniques available before the breakthrough.]

@Warren. You make a good point. Place/time help make the person; Crick may have got evolution before Darwin if born in Darwin's time. But how knows. All ideas long times after their discovery seem trivial; Even Einstein's discoveries bail in comparison to Higgs honestly. However, separating the scientist from his achievement seems to complicate the issue too much

Michael - I understand what you mean but my aim was to credit wok done by the person and to separate concepts from applications. For top scientist Darwin and Einstein are both great but IMO Einstein wins because to some extent Darwin stood on Wallace's shoulders. Medicine is difficult because, for example, Pasteur grasped the importance of infectious agents but Fleming 's discovery of penicillin changed the course of medicine and the lives of people so each could win but in different categories.

"The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance" by Fritjof Capra was really educational book for me.

However our preferences are always biased by our own incompetence and limited knowledge in many areas of science. I can recommend the following book for reference:

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf

@ Warren;

It can be very difficult to distinguished a talented biologist from a talented physicist; one theory is more mathematically versus conceptually eloquent.

All scientist stand on the shoulders of other scientist when making discoveries; Newton predicted particle bases of light before Einstein's photoelectric effect discovery. Additionally,

*poincare proved that Speed of light is a constant

*Einstein used Lorenzo's Transformations(knowledge that already existed)

*Had Lorenzo realized that mass/Energy equivalent and applied his transformations equations to matter, who would Einstein be?

Your judging scientist on originality; something very difficult to measure. Originality is concerned, Newton > Einstein; even created a whole discipline of math to make his theories/equations of motion more accurate! Higgs > Einstein; Einstein proved mass and energy are equivalent using other scientist's equations; Higgs field/higgs boson explains why we have mass, much more original.

Wallace and Darwin had distinct theories of evolution! Each had different central mechanism as driving forces for evolutionary change. Both understood that environmental pressured changed populations; Darwin emphasized sexual selection and competition; fitness relative to other members of the population! Wallace theory works better for asexual speciation. Darwin had initially not wanted to write his works up due to fear of persecution of the church; and he was right. Wallace writing up his argument promoted Darwin to publish his works; scientific community accepted Darwin's work to be more accurate.

You are splitting hairs with argument concerning speciation;

I vote Darwin over Einstein for 2 reason;

*theory of evolution made a bigger contribution to biology than Einstein's theories have to physics; Life is defined according to Darwinian evolution.

*Darwin's theory utilized the scientific method more thoroughly; rigorous verifiable predictions of GR/SR not prove until after Einstein's death or at least far after publication. Darwin gathered data from all around the world to crystallize his theory; effectively experimenting for 5 years to get his results; then another 23 years more of research before publication. More scientific work went into Darwin's work.

Michael - I wouldn't fight for Einstein over Darwin - everything you say is true but it all comes down to personal preference in the end. Mine is coloured by a possibly disproportionate admiration for Richard Feynman who was very different from Albert. My problem is that I don't really know enough abut the characters who made the big breakthroughs in such a disparate range of subjects. I've read books about some of them - Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Godel, Feynman, Riemann and some others, but this simply adds to my prejudices. Doing a D.Phil on Cephalosporins under Edward Abraham, who was a young member of the team that isolated penicillin during the war, induced a prejudice so strong that I am aware of it and try to discount it.. I'll follow this question with interest.

Michael,

Like Stephen I don't really feel like voting for a scientist over another, because science is too huge for my narrow culture, and I find it somehow unfair to give to much credit to only one character who may have found nothing at all if previous scientists -often much more obscure- hadn't paved the way before. In fact, my interest in science doesn't come from the work of one scientist only, but from the ones of many different scientists, including Einstein, Newton, Aristotle, Pierre and Marie Curie, Pasteur, Schrödinger, Darwin, Watson and Cricks, and so on. I find it impossible to make a direct comparison between all these people, even though, I know, your game here is to vote for one person only.

Well, my votes go to:

Physics: Isaac Newton

Chemistry: Dmitri Mendeleev

Biology: Charles Darwin

Human sciences / Psychology: Sigmund Freud

Earth Sciences / Geology: Alfred Wegener

I vote Einstein, not for a some kind of corporatism (I come from theoretical physics) but because he deeply modified our conception of time and space.

While Darwin has been so successful to merit against his theory an entire wide and popular movement of "creationism", still strong and working mainly in US, our conception of space and time for all the last century has remained the same as that of Newton's age. Also for a lot of scientists of our age the Earth is rounding around the Sun due to the "immediate" action of gravity, think of ordinary people!; on the contrary, all the notions linked to evolutionism or to DNA are so widespread that in many countries Darwin is the symbol of the modern science or in all our languages is very familiar a sentence like: "Oh, it is in my DNA..". I am happy because Darwin has won, at least in the science community. Einstein is for the future.

Eventually, may I strike a blow for Lucrezio and his poem "De rerum natura", the first sublime witness of the so-called "scientific environmentalism"? I am convinced that the "Atomists" have paved the way for the materialistic thought for all these centuries.

@Massimo, your analogy concerning Darwin is not fair. Those people associated with the creationist popular movement are not involved with biological science; most of them probably could not write in a paragraph what Einstein or Darwin are even famous for discovering. They know "That there evolution conflicts with that good Old bible." Nobody with a PhD is going to argue against evolutionary theory. Your point proves that Evolution has permeated more "intellectual" circles than anything created by any other scientist.

Biology = study of life. NASA defines life as concept biochemical entities that undergo Darwinian evolution. Evolution is the mechanism of life. "Life only make sense in light of evolution."

As I mentioned before, it is almost impossible to discern a good scientist from different disciplines or eras. It honestly is a matter of opinion.

I agree with your sentence about the impossibility of choosing the "best" scientist, and I interpreted your question as an intriguing provocation. And it is also true that Evolution has had and has an impact greater than any other theory, but not only in "intellectual" circles.

With my "analogy" I only meant that there are not so many big theories capable to raise a popular movement against them: there was always the conflict with the Old bible, but the "revolution" of Copernico and the position of Galilei were an occasion of a contest only inside a very narrow scientific community.

On the contrary, "Creationists" are a lot of people and constitute a big socio-cultural problem, as I was able to understand by the care and the kindness used by Isaac Asimov when he tried to face their "arguments. The fact that, presumably, a wide majority of them are ignorant of what the science says or simply ignorant, is, in my opinion, a worsening circumstance.

I think Darwin is a great choice, but in my mind, because of some of the obviousness of evolution, IMO compared to the theory of relativity, space and time travel, photovoltaics, etc, I am inclined to put Einstein ahead of Darwin. But that could be because the obviousness to me is due to the fact that conceptually, it is easier to understand evolution rather than theoretical physics, and I am a biochemist and not a physicist.

@Stephen Warren Chemistry: As a chemist I cannot think of a chemist who made a genuinely subject-shattering discovery –maybe Jeffrey Brender can help

For fundamental concepts it is pretty easy:

Linus Pauling (list by Derek Lowe at the Corante blog):

" you have The Nature of the Chemical Bond (a tremendous accomplishment by itself), the prediction of noble gas fluorides as possible, the alpha-helix and beta-pleated sheet structures of proteins, the mechanism of sickle cell anemia (and the concept of a "molecular disease"), the suggestion that enzymes work by stabilizing transitions states, and more"

I would also add the concept of electronegativity and the quantum explanation of resonance structures.

Robert Woodward for rational mechanistic synthesis would be another choice

Pauling's book was a bible in the late 1950s when I was an undergraduate and I heard Woodward lecture during a vsit to Oxford on tetrodotoxin (from blowfish), describing squalene, then recently found in shark liver, as something that could be called "just another unpleasant thing about sharks" but going on to describe its importance as a steroid precursor.

I hesitate to call Woodward, probably the greatest of all the synthetic organic chemists, "just a mechanic" but ..... Pauling yes but not quite in Einstein's league although maybe the top chemist. What do you think about de Mendeleev?

There is a de Mendeleev University in Moscow at which a friend of mine is a Professor.

From Sciam digital 20 June 2014

this ranking of “The Top 10 Geniuses” was found on Listverse.com.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Emanuel Swedenborg, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Stuart Mill, Blaise Pascal, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bobby Fischer, Galileo Galilei and Madame de Staël.

.......Madame de who?

Our article published in peer-reviewed Journal "Communicative & Integrative Biology". A few major points discussed in the paper:

(1) Brain is not the source of consciousness.

(2) Consciousness is ubiquitous in all living organisms, starting from bacteria to human beings.

(3) The individual cells in the multicellular organisms are also individually cognitive entities.

(4) Proposals like “artificial life”, “artificial intelligence”, “sentient machines” and so on are only fairytales because no designer can produce an artifact with the properties like internal teleology (Naturzweck) and formative force (bildende Kraft).

(5) The material origin of life and objective evolution are only misconceptions that biologists must overcome.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420889.2015.1085138

Thales of Miletus, he was the first and started it all

Thales of Miletus, he was the first and started it all

I think it has to be Einstein. His view of the relationship between mass and energy is the greatest theory ever

put forward. I doubt that there will ever be a greater one.

"It is just unfortunate that politicians of Germany mistook his great scientific revelations in another sense... "

I think this is a good example of an alternative fact, which no one feels too inclined to challenge.   But we will never learn from History if we misrepresent it.    So, which German politician (mis)quoted from Darwin?   Reference please.  

A difficult question to answer directly, as all scientists should be recognised, but Darwin of course comes to mind with his theory of evolution that brought out the Truth of Life in this realm of existence.- If you are fit you survive any challenges you may face - and it is true for natural and artificial things as well.

"You must be kidding."

Certainly not.  We are nowadays drifting into dangerous economic and political territory, so it is essential we learn from the the rise of the Nazis and understand the inspiration for their philosophy which I don't think  had anything at all to do with Darwin or indeed science.  If you think Hitler was inspired by Darwin, please give a primary source for this view.

I asked for primary sources, not youtube, so I am not even going to bother to chase these up.  However, I always take Wikipedia seriously, but I think you must have chosen the wrong Wikipedia link by mistake, as the one immediately above concerns a book by a creationist, hardly an unbiased source.  Anyhow, this book was extensively criticized, eg:  "Larry Arnhart, a professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University wrote "Weikart doesn't actually show any direct connection between Darwin and Hitler. In fact, Weikart has responded to my criticisms by admitting that the title of his book is misleading, since he cannot show any direct link between Darwin's ideas and Hitler's Nazism".

"We are nowadays drifting into dangerous economic and political territory. 

You in the sense just means Europe especially Germany, which is Fast loosing grounds...?"

I meant the USA and Europe, not especially Germany which has learned something from its past.

"Hitler forged many documents so as to rewrite History... And that the

Nazis destroyed much of the real evidences before evacuating to Argentina...

Btw... I wish to know what you mean by primary sources"

A primary source is the original  documentation, not what someone says or thinks in secondary sources.    It is the difference between asserting Obama phone-tapped Trump, and producing the original evidence for this.   Only evidence relating to the time before the Nazis came to power is relevant to any link between Darwin and Hitler.   H surely did not forge Mein Kampf.