Kepler and Bohr.
“The Big Showdown”, Scientist v Prince Jammy, the best dub album ever made…
Gotta go with Carl Sagan. He’s my hero. I think his Pale Blue Dot essay should be required reading/viewing for everyone in the world.
Probably Edward O. Wilson.
I would also like to add Rosalind Franklin who co-discovered the structure of DNA and who’s work was instrumental to Watson & Crick.
Enrico Fermi - brilliant man in several distinct areas, and by all reports the nicest, most modest man you’d ever meet.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered neutron stars, was stiffed out of the Nobel because she’s a - gasp - girl, and yet accepted this with an equanimity I can barely imagine.
Michael Brown - planet finder who de-throned Pluto. “I found a planet” - how many people in all of recorded history can say that?
And, of course, my advisor.
Among living scientists at least (if computer scientists count), Donald E. Knuth. What other world-renowned scientist can say that his first scientific publication appeared in MAD Magazine?
My best friend since high school is a research scientist in material engineering.
Erwin Schrodinger. I like what he did for cats the world over.
Carl Sagan.
My brother was a huge fan when we were kids. He wrote to him and received a hand-written personal reply. This changed my brother’s life, and mine as well, in a very small way that grew and grew.
I also like Richard Feynman because he helped me understand stuff I never would have gotten otherwise.
Richard Feynman indeed.
Dr. Robert Hare, criminal psychologist and developer of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised, or PCL-R, the psychometric tool used to evaluate psychopathy.
To late to edit, but: gotta give Phil Plait some love, too.
I’ll go with E.O. Wilson, too. His Encyclopedia of Life is just amazing.
Biased (and possibly sappy) personal answer: my dad, who’s a physicist. Just about every little kid goes through this phase where they’re convinced that their daddy knows everything. I’m 23 and I’m still in that phase.
Another childish answer: I have a soft spot for Bill Nye, if just because he was the one who really got me into science when I was a kid.
Someone from my field of study: the late Dr. William Maples, a well-known forensic anthropologist who wrote the fantastic book Dead Men Do Tell Tales. Sure he comes off a little bit conceited in the book, but he was good at what he did, so honestly, I think he earned it. His book convinced me to donate my skeleton to my university after I die.
The world’s most famous (and coolest) Japanese-Canadian/environmentalist/geneticist/activist/TV-science host David Suzuki.
Suzuki is viewed, up here, much like how you Americans view Carl Sagan; he has had a hugely profound affect on the popularization of science in Canada and around the world. Personally, his show has greatly shaped my view of Science from an early age. It filled me with a spark of interest that continues to this day.
Plus in the late 80’s Suzuki called that Nazi Rushton out for what he is. An intellectually bankrupt racist pettling fringe pseudo-science. Straight talk; no minced words.
The guy is just so friggin cool.
Niels Bohr pulled together all of the thinking of the day to intuit the structure of atoms and fought the good fight when it came to resisting the Nazi’s (his meeting with Heisenberg during the war is the subject of books and plays) and understanding the implications of atomic power (in Rhode’s epic The Making of the Atomic Bomb, he is more of a grand old man in the race to the atom bomb than Einstein, in terms of actual involvement).
And his quotes are legendary:
Has also been attributed to Fermi
well, many wonderful recomendations have been made and certainly they are amazing scientists. My contribution is perhaps not the best scientist, but perhaps the smartest scientist?
Carl Frederick Gauss
http://www.ce.memphis.edu/1112/FAQs/gauss.htm
taught himself to read at age three. Went forward from there. Invented Least Squares by the age of 17. At the age of 24, essentially created the theory of numbers. That was probably the greatest achievement in Math. Was productive into his 80s.
This thread is full of awesome.