It requires far more dedication and extaordinary genius to think of great theories and most often a lifetime of dedicated effort to bring new ideas to the world.But the ppl who often are remembered and honoured are war winning politicians and sexy actors.More ppl know then George Bush and Tom Cruise than Stephan Hawking or Einstein
Well, most living scientists haven’t finished their “lifetime of dedicated effort” yet, so it’s a little early to tell which ones we should be valuing, and how much. I think we do value the scientists of a couple hundred years ago more than we value their contemporaries who were actors, politicians, or sportsmen.
And how do we tell who’s valued more? By how much attention they get from the general public? How much money they make? The esteem of their peers? Their reputation centuries later?
People in the worlds of sports, entertainment, and politics get their pictures on a lot more magazine covers because seeking that kind of attention is part of the nature of their business (and, often, part of the personality of those who are drawn to it). And the average person is a lot more aware of the work they’re doing because they can see them actually doing it.
“Perhaps one day people who spell correctly will replace athletes at the top of our national pantheon.” -Lisa Simpson
I’d like to believe that in the long run, scientists receive far more recognition than sports or entertainment figures. Aw, who am I kidding?
Economically, it’s capitalism at its most naked. Figure out a way to get people to shell out large amounts of money to watch scientists work, and your problem’s solved.
As for why we value politicians so much, haven’t a clue 
Not to say that we shouldn’t highly value scientists, but I don’t think politicians belong in the same category as actors and athletes. Politicians make life-or-death decisions about war and peace, and pass laws that can affect us all. We should rightly value–or revile–politicians based on how wisely or unwisely they do those things far more highly, or more severely, than we do an actor who wins an Oscar, or stars in a terrible flop, or some athlete who lets a grounder go between his legs in a World Series game.
I think athletes are, in a sense, more accessible. Not everybody understands quantum mechanics, but it’s easy to appreciate the human body pushed to its fullest because it’s something we can all do. I mean, I’ll probably never dunk a basketball without a trampoline, but I know how great it can feel when you exert yourself. And as a kid, anybody can dream of doing stuff like that. It’s a little harder to relate to e=mc[sup]2[/sup] on that primal level- you need to know more stuff to appreciate that, so it comes to you later in life.
None of which is to discourage the capitalism side of it, because I think one reason kids are that way is because of the athlete-loving society we live in. Nor is this to say it’s right. But come on, I can’t be the only one here who grew up hoping to play a sport.
How many sports heroes of the late 1600s or early 1700s can you name off the top of your head?
How many scientists?
I was about to make the same point but Dogface beat me to it.
Name three actresses that were popular between 1850-1910.
Name three inventors or scientists from the same period.
Stop complaining. The fruits of intellect always win in the end.
Unequivocally, YES!
"Kill all the politicians, and everyone is happy.
Kill all the engineers, and everybody dies."[ul][sup]Buckminster Fuller[/sup][/ul]
But who did the contemporaries of those historical scientists want to be? Isaac Newton or the now-forgotten actors and politicians of the day?
I don’t know.
Ask yourself this: How many people could tell you, at least a little bit, who Edison, Pasteur, and Pavlov were? A pretty fair number, I’d say. Now find how many people can name three famous actors or singers of the 19th century. Damned few, I’d say.
How many people know the name Albert Einstein? How many people can name one actor who was famous in 1906?
Maybe scientists DO get more recognition in the long run.
Teachers should be the most revered of all professions.
Yet look at how society treat them through the centuries:Socrates, Jesus, sentenced to death. Napoleon and Pluto, exiled. Newton, died a virgin. And today: low pay, schools converted to firearm or explosive targets or bomb shelters of a different kind.
Shouldn’t scientists be valued more than politicians actors and sportsmen?
Good scientists maybe. Unfortunately today most who rise within their particular field are politicians and actresses who give lip service to scientific integrity and truth. These people are sportswomen who play a silly “publish or perish” game.
Shouldn’t a mother who with selfless sacrifice and single-minded dedication raises her children to be moral citizens be more valued than scientists?
You are asking why their are few celebrity scientists. Others have brought up teachers, mother, I’ll add soldiers, police, and other emergency workers as well.
It’s simple. Its not their job to be famous. Actors are successful partially based on their ability to get people to know their names, and come to their shows. They have to be famous, or they don;t make money.
That’s doubly true for a politician. An unknown politician is one who will lose the next election.
Scientists? Well, it helps if their have name recognition among their peers. They have to win grants and get published, after all, and get a plumb position at the institution of their choosing. But they don’t have the need, inclination, or time to cultivate their image in the population at large. Only a few will publish with the layman in mind, or hire a publicist, make public appearance, and so on. It takes work to become a celebrity. Most scientist (or parents, teachers, etc) have other things to do.
Now, why aren’t scientists as a group, or as a concept, valued more than actors? I wonder if they aren’t. It’s hard to tell since they aren’t celebrities, and it’s hard to celebrate a faceless diverse group, but I think we encourage science, and encourage people to become scientists. You don’t hear many negatve stereotypes against scientists do you? And the ones you do hear (nerdy, shy) are mainly light-hearted.
Furthermore, I sincerely doubt that by any objective standard you could argue we value sports heroes or movie actors more than we value teachers or scientists.
It’s easy to be astonished at the salaries big sports stars or movie stars command, but
A) Even within the sports and entertainment industries they are the vast, vast minority. The great majority of athletes and actors don’t make that much money, and they are in very high-risk careers with short lifespans. Some athletes make millions, but the great majority end up at 28 years old washed up, having made very little and having to restart in a regular career with no experience and often no education.
B) The extraordinary individual salaries are to a large extent a result of a pie being cut fewer ways rather than the pie being bigger.
For example, we hear a lot about baseball players making absurd amounts of money. But in terms of where society is putting its money, what does society spend more on - pro ballplayers, or teachers? The answer is teachers, by an enormous margin, at least a couple of orders of magnitude. The salaries paid out to elementary and high school teachers just in my province exceeds the amount paid to all the professional baseball players in North America. My province represents maybe 3% of the population of the continent north of the Rio Grande.
However, while society pays way, way more money to teachers than it does to pro athletes, the pie is split many more ways, because it takes many more teachers to do the work. Professional sports are a FAMOUS industry, as is entertainment, but by the standards of the North American economy they are not particularly LARGE industries. The Ford Motor Company pays out more in salaries in two months than the National Football League does in a year, and Ford isn’t even the biggest automaker. Pro sports are dwarfed in size by the education system, and are probably dwarfed in size by “Science,” though you’d have to define what you mean by that.
Napoleon was a teacher?! (Even if he was, I think he was exiled for trying to take over Europe, not for spreading subversive learning.)
What did Mickey’s dog do to deserve exile? I think you mean Plato. 
And Aristotle, perhaps?
That might be his own fault. The fact that he was a genius - although remember, he didn’t consider gravity his major work - doesn’t mean he was a player.
Well, speaking as a scientist, I’d have to say “Yes!” But I don’t think that’ll happen.
A. Whitney Brown, in hi book The Big Picture, relates how he lookd up an ad for a Research Assistant in the New York Times. It gave a rather detailed description for a biological ciences position, in which the aplicant had to be expert in a number of tchniques and tchnologies. The kicker as at the end, where the stipend was revealed to be some unbelievably low figure – $16k or something ik that. Brown noted that cab drivers made more than that. “Students should be steered away from a career in science for their own good!” he said, tongue not entirely in cheek.
Forget about the compensation offered sports superstars – a decent wage would be a good thing.
The reason actors of the 19th century are not so famous was the absence of any enduring work by them and the extremely local nature of their work.I dont think anybody beyond 50 miles of the local theater got to see what alocal actor did.It was technology in the form of TV and cinema that made the stars of 20th century so famous.Few remember the inventor of the TV.Fewer still even know the ppl who made the Color TV.And a negligible number know who improved it to the level it is today…digital flat screen television with a hundred thousand features and associated technologies that make TV viewing so simple and enjoyable.The fact that it is so easy to switch the TV on makes us take the contributions of the ppl behind it for granted ,while the ppl on the screen become icons of their time.
I want 20 ppl to name just 10 ppl behind the Pentium processor, the first walk on the moon (not the astronauts or Kennedy), the Ferrari (not the schumacher ) and the name of ten scientists from Dupont.
I feel it is wrong to say that scientists wouldn’t like the attention and prefer to remain aloof.In fact many scientists lived their last few years in depression due to lack of recognition of their work in their lifetime.
ppl?