I thought he was famous for his work in 1970s TV.
Aristotle. In spite of his many errors, he taught people how to think.
Oh no! You too?
How could he possibly be famous for his work in the 1970s when he wasn’t even born yet?
Do I really need to remind you this is serious thread and ask you to keep it serious?
You know, I always had more respect for you than that. I had always thought you were one of the leading thinkers on this board. And now? You’ve gone and disappointed me like that. You should be achamed of yourslef.
Are you not ashamed of yourslef?
If not, then please say six Hail Marys and eight Our Fathers and then you can say one great big, “OY VEY”!
Einstein and general relativity. And it’s not close, IMHO. Most scientific discoveries would have come along sooner or later if the discover-er hadn’t figured it out, but AIUI we might not have figured out general relativity today if Einstein hadn’t.
I have to agree with this. BTW, special relativity was in the air and Einstein just got there first. General relativity is in a different class of discovery.
Newton and Leibniz were impressive, but calculus was something else whose time had come. And its roots go back to Archimedes who used infinitesimal ideas to calculate the area between a parabola and a straight line.
Plus, the thing with Newton and Liebniz is that obviously somebody else would have figured out calculus. Newton’s great work was the Principia.
Yes, that stuff is a great accomplishment.
But as far as practical applications?
About the worst that would happen is astronomy would be a bit more complicated/confusing, deep space probes would be a bit more “unpredictable” than expected, and when GPS satellites were put up they would not work.
If we are going for “impacted society in a major and good way” I’ll go with the invention of the printing press…though like MOST things here, sooner or later someone else would have had the idea.
OMG! Do you mean to say that you don’t think the Calculus has any real world or practical applications?
I just woke up and so I’m really too groggy to come up with the best examples of practical applications. But I’m quite certain that most advanced human achievments that involve advanced scientific calculations really owe their achievments to Calculus.
For example, the moon landing. Do you think that could have been accomplished without Calculus? I’m no expert and I cannot say for certain. But I just feel it in my bones that if it wasn’t for Calculus, there would never have been any Moon landing.
Do you believe that humans could have made that moon landing without using Calculus? I can’t imagine that. And, I just hope beyond hope that someone won’t prove me wrong and show the world just how dumb I am - like usual.
By the way,
I just saw another thread that made me feel it was certainly eligible for consideration.
Whoever it was who invented Girl Scout Cookies. Or … isn’t it Girl Guide Cookies?
They really latched onto a truly great thing there. Oh, Yummy, Mommy!
(I’m feeling a little bi-polar today)
I was talking about Einsteins Special and General Relatvity, NOT calculus.
But my post was a bit vague so I can see the confusion here.
No harm, no foul…carry on.
General relativity has any number of real world applications. We wouldn’t have GPS satellites without it, for one thing. And understanding how the universe works is certainly a real world application, even if it isn’t necessarily a practical one.
I wonder where I have heard that before?
:dubious:
Next time just quote me and be done with it.
I think David Hilbert was pretty neck-and-neck with Einstein in the general relativity stakes.
Gangnam Style
The man has a point 
Great. Now I have a mental movie playing of the two of them closely racing around a mile-and-a-quarter track, whipping themselves in the backside while the crowd goes wild, a large horse shoe shaped bouquet of flowers awaiting the winner.
On a dry track it would be Einstein going away, but add some mud and it’s a tossup.
Oops. OK.
I just want to say that I appreciate the way in which you handled that.
Tempted as I am to support the physicist, I think I just might place Mendel’s genetics above Einstein’s general relativity. Mendel is, so far as I know, unique among scientists in that he did not stand on the shoulders of giants. Mendelian genetics could have been discovered at any time after the development of agriculture back in the murky days of prehistory… and yet it wasn’t. And Mendel’s work has seen a lot more practical application than Einstein’s.
I agree that Einstein, Newton (and perhaps Leibniz) were among the greatest geniuses ever. Calculus was an idea whose time had come, but Newton’s Gravitation, Optics, and Laws of Motion were all hugely important (The thread asks for “accomplishment”, singular. Does this mean we should reject Newton who had several outstanding accomplishments but perhaps no single one comparable to Einstein’s general relativity in genius?)
Mendel’s discovery was very important but not directly influential: unfortunately Mendel’s result was ignored for several decades until it was probably on the verge of rediscovery anyway.
One “dark horse” candidate for greatest inventor was Ts’ai Lun who allegedly discovered the recipe for paper, that very important material.
I don’t think any historian of science would agree with this. Einstein formulated the General Theory all by himself, but had trouble finalizing the mathematics. He gave a lecture heard by David Hilbert (perhaps the greatest mathematician of that era). Einstein and Hilbert then each came up with the final equation at about the same time. Hilbert himself gave full credit to Einstein.
Well, they said that about Jesus, too.