Excuse me–“A picture of him published about 20 years ago…” :o
Why?
"He’s top man in nuclear- and astrophysics. He knows all about meteors! – Syliva van Buren
If memory serves, it was Principal Skinner that Dr. Hawking punched in the face.
Afterwards, he drank with Homer at Moe’s, acknowledging his admiration for Homer’s donut-shaped universe theory (and admitting that he might have to steal it).
Dr. Emmett L. Brown
Gotta be Nikola Tesla. Who can’t love a wacko genius?
Feynman of course is near the top of the list, as is Turing.
Darwin, Bacon, Babbage, Keppler, and Oppenhiemer.
sorry, Dougie_Monty but I will never forgive Teller for what he did to Oppi.
My favs:
Thomas Edison (Mr. Plenty O’ Patents)
and the coolest scientist who ever lived…
Bill Nye, The Science Guy!
Lister, where would the world of cleanliness be without him?
And my best friend and yours, Chucky Darwin… gotta love evolution!
My husband.
Also Fritjof Capra, because “The Tao of Physics” did wonderful things to my brain.
Dr. Evil.
Actually, I’m torn between Da Vinci, Newton, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (if Jefferson even belongs there).
Oh, and Brian Taylor and Ken Baker are pretty high on my list, too.
Giordano Bruno, for being burnt at the stake defending the Copernican heliocentric theory
Galileo Galilei, speaking of achievements…
Charles Darwin, it’s fun merely rousing Creationists 
Edwin Schrodinger, for his famous equation and he didn’t even believe in QM
Linus Pauling: two unshared Nobel prizes. What more needs to be said?
Richard Dawkins: for rousing Creationists
Buckminster Fuller: a real wacko, this man
Not really my favorite, but since no one else has mentioned him I’ll say Nobel laureate Leon Lederman for his absolutely hilarious physics book The God Particle.
An engineer more than a scientist, I’d have to vote for ** Dr. Max Faget** of NASA. His brilliant spacecraft designs got us to the moon and continue to influence the field today - most likely will for many, many years to come.
Originally posted by Urban Ranger
You may be interested to know that, according to Outlines of History by H. G. Wells, Darwin commented in a published statement, ‘What a foolish idea seems to prevail about a link between natural selection and dialectic materialsm.’ Shortly after the statement was published, Darwin was surprised to get a letter from Karl Marx, asking permission to dedicate the English translation of Das Kapital to him.
You can take it from there.
I’d include Tesla, Sidis and Leedskalnin if they were scientists; they are rather creative geniuses and logiticians, more-so than ‘scientists’. Most famous scientists - Edison in particular; are ‘rich daddies boys’ who steal ideas and practice propoganda.
Edison owes all of his fame to his wealth and exploitation of talent; fortunately talent (like Tesla for example) that he had, were so bright as to actually be able to figure out how to make crappy technology (Edison’s ‘patents’) compatible with phenominal technology; no small task! Edison was the kind of guy who rewarded genius with tearing up contracts and laughing at them for thinking they might actually be paid. Edison is a truly american hero - ruthless capitolist, morally bankrupt (reminds me of a thread about women always picking the ‘wrong’ guys, you’d think they actually wrote the history books! ducks for cover. The american anti-hero (self-less creators) scarcely get mention in history… sigh
Sidis of course is the genius whose treatsies on mathematics and physics were confiscated by the U.S. defence departments when he was 5 years old; still to this day, unprinted. At the age of 6 he was learning one language per day. Teased his entire life (a counter-intelligence technique used by capitolist societies); he died lonesome, memorizing all the time-tables and bus routes in the world. Sidis is the first person to tell people about black holes to which the general population can trace anyways…
Leedskalnin is the magnetic genius who used the earths magnetic field to cut and move huge blocks of coral (read: heaviest known and hardest material known to be cut - even from the pyramids in Giza); to construct his castle down in Florida, the entrance of which is considered the most phenomenal engineering feat known to this day (by the general public anyways). He died of starvation.
These people all had integrity, morality, logical consistancy and conviction to take the hard road; They were martyrs of proper logic rather than corrupt logic, and for this they are my heroes.
James Clerk Maxwell had quite a bit of scientific presige and rigor; I also admire the way he died. This isn’t even starting on the martyrs of the biological sciences… shakes head
-Justhink
Does this mean Edison intimidated lawyers and blew up courthouses? As it stands perhaps we should at least empty our bladders onto his grave…
Another vote for Linus Pauling. Not only did he win two unshared Nobels(chemistry and Peace,) but he was born and raised in my hometown of Portland, OR.
Linus Pauling grew up in 6th street in the first edition neighborhood of Lake Oswego, Oregon. I spoke with Dr. Abram Hoffer in person on this exact subject…
-Justhink