Lee De Forest, the “Father of Radio,” was somewhat of a fraud. He didn’t have a good understanding of the physics of vacuum tubes, and was more concerned with self-promotion than science.
I have never understood the fascination with Nikola Tesla. The guy was a nut. And most of what he claimed to have done had already been done by someone else.
Yes, Stephen Hawking was a great physicist. But there have been lots of great physicists. Would he have been as famous had he not been disabled?
Thomas Edison was really just a ruthless business guy, yet most people think he was a scientist/inventor.
Thomas Edison was a mechanical electrical genius. Whether you want to call him a “scientist” or inventor (1000 patents, many world-changing) is your call .
He was also a great experimenter and although he farmed out the math, his insights into physics, much like Faraday who also lacked mathematical sophistication, justify his being called a ‘scientist’. In my opinion, a great one.
Tesla was the father of AC electricity and electric induction motors. These were monumental accomplishments, he’s not overrated. He wasn’t that good at business and maybe he was a little crazy so he didn’t have much success after those initial accomplishments, but that doesn’t diminish what he did do.
He was an inventor. He believed he could make a long lasting incandescent light bulb when nobody else did. It took him a long time to find a filament that would work. He didn’t do everything himself, he had money to pay others, but he did come up with many original successful ideas himself. He was no great scientist or engineer, but very few people were back then.
If I may throw in an under-rated scientist it would be Joseph Henry. Numerous 19th and 20th century inventors, scientists, and engineers relied on his work and his personal advice.
The line about Hawking made me wince. Ascribing a physicist’s fame to his disability implies that people with disabilities are only known because they’re disabled, as if that were the most important thing about them. And if disability were all it took, wouldn’t the many physicists with disabilities be household names? Ask the next ten people you meet who Wanda Diaz Merced is. Odds are at least nine of them won’t know.
Hawking wasn’t the only physicist whose theories led us to a better understanding of black holes, but even before he became widely known to the public, Hawking Radiation and other theories made him well-known and highly respected among fellow physicists. The reason he became a household name was not his disability but his ability to explain physics and its fascinations in a way we laypeople could understand and appreciate. *A Brief History of Time *has sold 10 million copies, and it’s still selling. The book’s success led to widespread media exposure. Sure, the fact he was able to accomplish all he did while physically incapacitated with ALS made people respect him even more. Sure it was inspirational. But it’s not why he’s famous.
Being on Star Trek and The Simpsons probably helped too.
Still, although he was a great scientist before most people even knew his name, I don’t think there’s much doubt that a large part of his public celebrity was due to the fact that he was profoundly disabled physically yet his mind leapt ahead unfettered.
I think it’s reasonable to say that Hawking is over-rated among the general population based simply on his fame. Most people who recognize his name couldn’t tell you anything he accomplished as a physicist, nor could they name any living physicist. That’s no reflection on how he was recognized within the scientific community.
Crafter_Man, you started your list with an outright fraud, that is making the others look worse by association.
Oh, I see. You’re talking only about the fame of someone in the general population then? Because that does present some issues, Say “Lee de Forest” and watch the blank stares. How can someone be overrated if most of the general populace hasn’t heard of him?
I don’t know what the OP intended but I though he might be getting at that by mentioning fame. Someone can be overrated or underrated, or even unknown among different groups of people.
Arno Penzias. He basically got lucky, in several ways. He moved right from science to administration, and screwed that up.
I made a couple of presentations to him, and was a day long meeting where our center was presenting our research to him when he was head of Bell Labs. He was not very impressive.
I remember when his book came out. When the PR flacks push a memoir, they usually give some clever saying or anecdote involving the person. For his the Bell Labs flacks quoted him quoting someone else.
I believe I remember Hawking writing about how undeserved his Nobel Prize was.
I’ll go along with this. I am not sure if I want to include Hawking on my list or not; I tend to waffle on that point. But while I could name a few physicists off the top of my head (not sure just who is alive or dead at this point) I am just not sure I know enough about the field to render a just verdict. Now Ezra T. Newman on the other hand; very underrated. And the that I survived one of his more advanced classes when I really didn’t have the horsepower to pull it off isn’t affecting my opinion at all.
As for my list
Winner by a wide margin is Ben Franklin with Sagan and Edison fighting it out for second place. OK – I’m in a grumpy mood – put Hawking in for the Honorable Mention.
Neil deGrasse Tyson strikes me more as a fame hound than a proper head down scientist. For a while, NdGT seemed like he was lobbying to be the official TV spokesperson for Science.
