Egotistic reply? Me of course.
Serious reply? Richard Feynmann.
heh. I’ve met Neil. He’s a cool guy. One of my friends was Neil’s undergrad advisor. He told me that Neil got his start when a local radio station called the lab about a story and Neil happened to answer the phone - he was apparently so scintillating that they invited him into the studio. The rest, as they say, is history.
Dunno if its true, but I have no reason to doubt it.
If we’re going for living scientists, I like the pugnacious ones.
One who comes to mind who I’ll mention not for any other reason other than I know at least one doper from what they’ve recently posted will be very familiar is Ross Anderson. Feisty fellow.
Real-time clarification -Just saw my friend in the hall and asked him - he KNEW Tyson as an undergrad, was not his advisor (friend was at MIT at the time).
Actually, there’s one I have to add
Michael S. Feld
Long-time director of the George Harrison Spectroscopy Lab, Contributor to lots of Laser and Quantum Electronics works, observer of superradiance and constructor of the single-atom laserVery Active in Lasers in Medicine for detection of disease, prediction of cancers, dissolving of arterial placque, and other uses. Mentor to a generation of Optical Physics students (including astronaut Ron McNair), human rights supporter. He was my own advisor and friend.
And he died in April. May he rest in peace.
A conventional answer, but it has to be Einstein.
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.”
What a dude.
Olivia Judson.
The late great Dr. Carl Sagan. He made science accesible to the masses. When I was 12, I received “Pale Blue Dot” for christmas. I was absolutely enthralled. It was the first real science book I ever read, besides my school texts. I have been hooked ever since. When my grandfather showed me the “Cosmos” television series I watched all the episodes in about 5 days. Prior to that only G.I. Joe cartoons could hold my attention for so long.
BILLIONS AND BILLIONS!
She is a physiologist and a world-renowned (really) expert in obesity.
She has been a presenter at the Oxford Round Table 3 times in the past 5 years.
Mother of five children, three of whom have graduated with honors from college, the fourth is a sophomore at the Savannah College of Arts and Design, and the fifth is applying to Harvard as a rising junior this autumn.
All the way to post 16 before a mention of mine: Richard Feynman.
I’m sure she’s great, but you might not want to advertise a connection with the Oxford Round Table. it is, to put it kindly, (perhaps) not quite a scam (although this point is debatable - many would call it one). Its not affiliated in any way with Oxford University, they send invitations pretty much to anyone, and its reputation in academic circles as a false or vanity conference is pretty high.
Me, but hopefully only for a few more months. Beyond that, Tesla.
Michio Kaku. It was him that first introduced me to the whole idea of the Type I, II and III civilizations. After hearing that for the first time, my mind almost exploded. It’s lead me to read/explore MANY different and fascinating areas of science.
I’d second Maxwell for his vast array of accomplishments (but especially thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and electrodynamics), and I also favor David Bohm and Linus Pauling for the breadth of their work within and outside of scientific theory, but I think it’s only fair to give a heads up to Andrei Sakharov, who while pretty much single-handedly taking on the Soviet political leadership on the topic of nuclear proliferation of the very weapons he had earlier been instrumental in designing (and suffering years of house arrest in the closed city of Gorky) but also doing groundbreaking work in fields as diverse in plasma physics, cosmology, high energy particle physics, and a condensed matter variation on quantum gravity called emergent gravity. And he won the Nobel Prize for Peace (although the Soviets wouldn’t permit him to go to Oslo to collect it).
When the canonical list of people who are ultimately responsible for delegitimizing the Soviet leadership and bringing the regime down is drafted, Sakharov deserves a high position on it.
Stranger
I like Tesla.
Since Sagan is taken and for the same reason (making science accessible), I’ll go with Norman Borlaug. His research has done more to help people than probably anybody in centuries, literally preventing conservatively many millions of people from starving to death.
Einstein, Feynman, DaVinci, Sagan, Newton, Galileo, Ben Franklin… All for different reasons, but mainly a respect for who they were in their time, and for their character, genius, versatility, insight and balls, to varying degrees.
Richard Feynmann interests me with his great books
Norman Borlaug is pretty cool - I met him in middle school and he did a good job of explaining his work.
Joseph Fourier did an enormous amount of fundamental work in mathematics and heat transport. A huge number of natural prcoesses (heat transport, electricity, fluid mechanics, diffusion…) can be modeled using Fourier’s equations, and his mathematical work formed the basis of frequency analysis.
50/50 Norman Borlaug and Maurice Hilleman – for lives saved.