living physicists in your opinion
top 5?
I think you need to clarify what you mean. For example Peter Higgs has been in the news recently (because of the Higgs boson which has been in the news lately), but this is something he predicted back in the 1960s, along with other people. And I think this is true for most of the big names–they are famous for something they did some time back. [And as someone knowing virtually nothing about physics, I have no idea how high Peter Higgs would rank. Top 50?]
So are you interested in the 5 biggest names, or for people doing exciting research now?
I’m not a physicist, but Edward Witten is pretty high ranked from what I know of the subject. I remember in a PBS special, a physicist said they (the leaders in physics) thought of Witten the way that the general public thinks of PhD professors of physics.
I remember hearing of some article of the top 20 (or 50 or 100, I don’t remember) living physicists rated by physicists. Steven Hawking didn’t even rank. So that tells you how far divided from the science the general public is, Hawking is probably the no. 1 that comes up when the general public (myself included) think of physics.
Just trying to think of the most accomplished people who happen to still be alive leads to a pretty elderly list. Possible choices include:
Philip W. Anderson (89)
Freeman Dyson (89)
Steven Weinberg (79)
Yoichiro Nambu (92)
Murray Gell-Mann (83)
To some degree this is a function of the fact that it’s (arguably) harder to make huge theoretical breakthroughs than it used to be (who knows what a guy like Ed Witten could have contributed if he were active when the underpinnings of the Standard Model were still being worked out. And experimental breakthroughs, at least in high-energy physics, tend to be the results of huge international collaborations, where the credit is shared by many.
Michio Kaku
Brian Greene
Neil DeGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist)
This list seems more based on their efforts to popularize physics than their actual research.
I suppose “most brilliant physicists” is vague enough that it could be taken to mean “most brilliant when it comes to communicating with the public”, but that’s not how I took the OP.
Mmmm…its an interesting but curiously open question. We may not know who the finest physicists of this age are until they have passed on.
Personally I don’t focus on the individuals but instead pay attention to the accumulated ideas which spring into daylight every now and then. That does not imply any disrespect for the deep theoretical physicists who do the hard yards - its just that they are magnitudes above anything I can understand. When their ideas are crystallised then I think we of the general public can applaud their work.
Ummm…
Steven Hawking
(What am I missing? I would think he would be everyone’s first choice.)
J.
But this is the problem when you ask a question like this to the general public. Heck, most people would be hard pressed to name five living physicists, period, much less understand any objective criteria in ranking them. Unless you work in a field in the research forefront of the physical sciences you probably have essentially no idea who the top brains are in a particular area, and probably can’t name the premier minds in any but the most closely aligned fields.
Stranger
Chronos! 
Certainly a bright guy, but not even in the top five in terms of innovation in modern physics or how widely his papers are cited in other research. “Hawking radiation”? The fundamenal concept was developed independently and with priority by Jacob Bekenstein (published in 1973) and also by the far-ranging Yakov Zel’dovich (unpublished on the topic, but it was acknowleged that he introduced the concept to Hawking) who is as familiar to students of shock wave and cumbustion phenomena (about which he literally wrote The Book–Physics of Shock Waves and High Temperature Hydrodynamic Phenomena) as he is to particle physicists and astrophysicists.
Stranger
Sheldon Cooper.
I disagree: Hawking made the analog between certain properties of a black hole and thermodynamics, Bekenstein took Hawking’s work and went one stage further and proposed that Hawking’s analog was the actual thermodynamic properties of black holes, but couldn’t justify what was basically a conjecture. Zel’dovich, it seems, introduced Hawking to the effects of quantum physics on the Penrose process, an important stage in the development of the Hawking effect, but still very substantially short of deriving the Hawking effect and it’s implications on black hole physics.
Hawking gets the lion’s share of the credit for the theory of black hole thermodynamics and nearly all the credit for discovering the related Hawking effect, which is entirely justified.
Hawking also did equally important work on singularities in general relativity before this and has made other key contributions to the general area of quantum gravity and quantum cosmology. An ordered list of the top 5 living physicists is a bit subjective, but Hawking is rightly regarded as one of the top living physicists in terms of contribution, which is astounding given the health problems he has faced from the very start.
I would probably put Ed Witten first. But, and it is a serious but, if string theory doesn’t pan out, I would have to say that, as a physicist, his work was vacuous. As a mathematician, however, his work is extremely important no matter what.
This illustrates the fact that we will have to wait 50 years to find out who the best physicist was today. Incidentally, I would have put Feynmann first were he still alive.
I know nothing about physicists, but was recently astonished by this article about a physicist arrested for drug smuggling.
I doubt he would be considered a TOP physicist, but in his field, is he considered reputable at least?
Yes, reputable - except for the “recent unpleasantness”. I’ve met him, even though he isn’t in my area. My impression is that in his area he’s in the top few percent, and turns out papers like nobody’s business. Probably not top 5 or 10, but maybe top 100 or better. Again - he works in a different area than I worked in, when I was in physics.
Thanks for the insights!
Can there be any doubt?
Chronos was my first thought as well, although his picture in the SDMB gallery does not look as impressive as his namesake.
IMNAAHO, he is one of the smartest men in the world, and simultaneously one of the stupidest. :headdsesk: