Mad Scientists

[Kobal2]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

That Newton conflated what was essentially magic with physics was a product of his unavoidable ignorance at being one of the very first to understand physical behavior in a systematic and objective way at all.

Stranger

Maybe, but then again you don’t see much alchemickal work done by Boyle, Huygens, Leibnitz… even though Leibnitz was way out there in many ways, in particular coming up with the first tentative concept of a computer, which was then supposed to be used to solve everything.
Solve in the mathematical sense of the word, I mean - he figured any information could be expressed as a binary number, and any concept or object is, in fine, an information ; therefore by performing the correct arithmetical computations on binary numbers you could in theory resolve any argument and suss out the natural laws behind everything.

IOW the dude pretty much planned on reverse engineering thought, knowledge and the universe itself. With cog-based hardware. I don’t know if that quite qualifies as “mad”, since we’re… pretty much getting around to doing that right around now, but dayumn.

[TonySinclair]

George Washington Carver became incredibly jealous of all the fame and fortune that Thomas Edison was getting for his inventions. According to historian Shabazz K. Morton, Carver died penniless and insane, trying to play a record with a peanut.

[Kenm]

@Derleth

So we can observe the results of Heisenberg’s actions but the mental states which produced them must always remain uncertain;

:Golf clap:

[KarlGauss]

Interestingly, a very similar thread from 2010 came up with almost the same list of names. At least we’re consistent.

[dasmoocher]

What about Timothy Leary?

His early work in psychology expanded on the research of Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney regarding the importance of interpersonal forces in mental health, focusing on how understanding interpersonal processes might facilitate diagnosing disorders and identifying human personality patterns. He developed a complex and respected interpersonal circumplex model, published in The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality,[13] demonstrating how psychologists could methodically use Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scores to predict respondents’ interpersonal response characteristics, or ways that they might respond to various interpersonal situations.

And then he decided to go on a trip…

[Nelson_Pike]

@Stranger On A Train

Einstein went on to work for nearly forty years after 1917 (nearly to his death in 1955) and, aside from an innovative design for a non-mechanism absorption refrigerator in 1926 (along with Leo Szilard, who would go on to do substantial work validating the nuclear chain reaction, the linear accelerator, cyclotron, chemostat, and a number of discoveries about the internal cellular physiology and molecular biology when he shifted fields), did little genuniely memorable or innovative work on his own. Most of his notable works after 1920 were collaborations in which the bulk of the work was done by collaborators. Einstein-Bose statistics (and the Einstein-Bose condensate that they predicted) were fundamentally developed by Satyendra Nath Bose, which were just extended in collaboration with Einstein.

Your appraisal of Einstein’s relative contribution to the discovery of Einstein-Bose statistics and condensate is incorrect.

In two papers Einstein took Bose’s original insight as far ahead of where Bose left off as he had in 1905 taken quantum theory ahead of where Planck left off. In the second of these papers he conveyed discovery of EBS/C. He did so without collaboration, although de Broglie’s matter wave thesis became an enabling independent factor in the discovery.

Here are two authoritative cites which would have mentioned collaboration if there had been any:

Was Bose-Einstein Statistics Arrived at by Serendipity?

Einstein’s Physics: Atoms, Quanta, and Relativity - Derived, Explained, and Appraised (see esp. page 100 section 7.2.3 &ff)

BTW it appears that EBS/C ought to be be termed an epic discovery rather than some work of high but less than epic import as I implied it was.

Now, if you cannot provide authority for several cases where the “bulk of the work was done by collaborators” then your comment to that effect should be retracted.

And NB you undercut yourself by saying that after 1920 Einstein did “little” significant work on his own, and that “most” such works were collaborative. That means that some was the sole result of individual effort, and since he lived another 35 years leaves the door wide open for continuing significant non-collaborative effort.

Finally, if you know of any theoretical physicist other than (perhaps) Newton who has ever been in epic-discovery top form longer than Einstein I would like to know about him. And let us give Einstein 20 years of top form, since his discovery of Einstein-Bose statistics and condensate was published in 1925.

@Stranger On A Train

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (intended to undermine the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics) was demonstrated to not prove discrete values for position and momentum under the assumption of local realism by John Stewart Bell (later confirmed by experiment in the early 'Eighteis).

Here is what I said about EPR: “it served mainly to force others strive for greater rigor.” I guess there was some fairly challenging rigor to strive for, seeing as how it took 30 years for Bell to provide the theoretical answer to EPR, and then another 20 or so for others to provide the experimental answer.

FYI here is an Institute for Advanced Study cite which informs us of the birth of EPR literally over a cup of tea:

The Advent and Fallout of EPR

(from cite)

One day, at the [Institute’s] traditional 3 o’clock tea, Rosen mentioned to Einstein a fundamental issue of interpretation related to entangled wave-functions. Einstein immediately saw the implications for his long-standing disagreement with [Niels] Bohr. As they discussed the problem, Boris Podolsky joined the conversation, and later proposed to write an article. Einstein acquiesced…

Podolsky, in fact, penned the EPR paper, which quickly became a centerpiece in the debate over the interpretation of quantum theory, a debate that continues today. Einstein wasn’t thrilled with the approach taken by Podolsky, who submitted the paper to Physical Review on March 25. In a letter dated June 19, 1935, to Erwin Schrö̈dinger (underline by NP), Einstein wrote, “For reasons of language this [paper] was written by Podolsky after several discussions. Still, it did not come out as well as I had originally wanted; rather, the essential thing was, so to speak, smothered by the formalism [gelehrsamkeit].”

So at the age of 56 or so Einstein’s powers were such that he could contribute to weighty problems at Tea Time! So what if he had collaborators?

And BTW Erwin Schrö̈dinger, discoverer of Quantum Wave Mechanics (for which EBS/C provided inspiration), was at one with Einstein in rejecting the probability-based course taken by subsequent development of the field. Hence his famous Cat.

[MacLir]

@Washoe

Would John Lilly qualify for this list? I really don’t know much about his earlier life, and the Wiki article on him is somewhat vague regarding this. I get the impression that even in his younger days he was a crackpot, but at that time he didn’t fully incorporate his nuttiness into his professional life. I know a couple of people who were very casually acquainted with him, and they told me that it was only after he started pursuing grant money to feed LSD to dolphins or something that he became an academic laughing stock.

The lecture of his I attended didn’t mention that; in fact it was somewhat dismissive of drugs in general, at least the way I took it.

After the lecture (about the Janus Project; developing a communications interface to talk to dolphins), this head gets up and asks about his work with “mind-expanding drugs.”

Dr. Lilly gives him this look and replies, “There are no mind-expanding drugs. Only mind-contracting ones.” and went on to the next questioner.

That quote has stuck in my memory ever since.