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Who is your favorite scientist and why?

by karlgoethebier (Abbot)
on Aug 01, 2017 at 13:02 UTC ( [id://1196441]=poll: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Vote on this poll

Ada Lovelace for the palindrome
[bar] 21/5%
Albert Einstein for having smelly feet
[bar] 10/2%
Alfred Nobel for his contribution to battlefield science
[bar] 6/1%
Burkhard Heim for providing the missing link between science and mysticism
[bar] 3/1%
Claude Shannnon for riding a unicycle at night at MIT
[bar] 13/3%
Donald Knuth for being such a great organist
[bar] 19/4%
Edward Teller for being the template for Dr. Strangelove
[bar] 3/1%
Edwin Hubble for pretending to be a pipe-smoking English gentleman
[bar] 6/1%
Erwin Schrödinger for cruelty to cats
[bar] 36/8%
Hedy Lamarr for weaponizing pianos
[bar] 27/6%
Hugh Everett for immortality, especially for cats
[bar] 5/1%
Isaac Newton for his occult studies
[bar] 19/4%
Kikunae Ikeda for discovering the secrets of soy sauce
[bar] 5/1%
Larry Wall for his website
[bar] 46/10%
Louis Camille Maillard for discovering why steaks taste good
[bar] 6/1%
Marie Curie for the shiny stuff
[bar] 14/3%
Nikola Tesla for the cool cars
[bar] 70/16%
Paul Dirac for speaking one word per hour when socializing
[bar] 19/4%
Richard Feynman for his bongo skills
[bar] 54/12%
Robert Oppenheimer for his in-depth knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita
[bar] 11/3%
Rusi P Taleyarkhan for Cold Fusion
[bar] 2/0%
Sigmund Freud for his Ménage à trois
[bar] 4/1%
Theodor W Adorno for his contribution to the reception of jazz
[bar] 4/1%
Wilhelm Röntgen for the foundations of body scanners
[bar] 3/1%
Yulii Borisovich Khariton for the Tsar Bomba
[bar] 12/3%
Other (please explain why)
[bar] 21/5%
439 total votes
Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by Ratazong (Monsignor) on Aug 01, 2017 at 14:16 UTC
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by ExReg (Priest) on Aug 01, 2017 at 14:03 UTC

    Archimedes. Two thousand years ahead of his time, but best known for what he discovered in the bathtub.

      See also Le Thé au harem d'Archimède.

      «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

      perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by erix (Prior) on Aug 01, 2017 at 14:04 UTC

    Charles Darwin for making religion more obviously redundant.

      Just before this thread dives into throwing apples and oranges at each other.

      What is a "religion"?

      There are many very different dimensions

      • believing in higher beings/deities
      • ethical behavior (commandments like "don't kill" to "don't fart drive cars" )
      • political impact (e.g. cast system or using priests as functionaries or seeing a king as gods representative )
      • adopted traditions (from Christmas trees to female circumcision)
      • ethnic group thru strict endogamy *
      @Erix: Darwin didn't solve the problem of the watchmaker, and Kant proved long ago that there can't be any proof either way.

      Instead of discussing the badly defined R-word we should concentrate on aspects affecting our past and future - especially in a globalized world.

      Cheers Rolf
      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)
      Je suis Charlie!

      *) updated

      Charles Darwin for making religion more obviously redundant

      Yeah, we knew well before him that not believing in a deity was sheer idiocy. His theories, however, made it even more obvious.

      how does mr. darwins findings somehow remove the thought of a god or creator? you somehow insist that just because we evolve, that there is no sense of a god. care to elaborate?
        Discoveries like those of Mr. Darwin keep pushing back the ascribed functionality of a god, or as Dr. Tyson puts it "god is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance."

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by perldigious (Priest) on Aug 01, 2017 at 13:12 UTC

    James Clerk Maxwell for the second great unification in physics and the second greatest beard in history.

    Just another Perl hooker - My customers appreciate that I keep my code clean but my comments dirty.
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Aug 01, 2017 at 14:01 UTC

    Paul Dirac for Fermi's golden rule and walking the fine line.

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by talexb (Chancellor) on Aug 01, 2017 at 20:42 UTC

    Tough choice, but I had to go for Isaac Newton .. a cutting from his apple tree (the one that dropped an apple on his head) ended up growing in my grandfather's garden in Grantham, which I thought was pretty cool.

    Alex / talexb / Toronto

    Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by zentara (Archbishop) on Aug 02, 2017 at 11:53 UTC
    Professor Irwin Corey the World's Foremost Authority The Professor speaks

    Why? Because he has an internal Bullsh*t-Bingo generator running all the time, yet he speaks the truth. :-) Very important in this age of double-speak.


    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. ..... an animated JAPH
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by ptizoom (Scribe) on Aug 03, 2017 at 11:10 UTC
    Bertrand Russell, Georg Cantor and Ferdinand Möbius tying the knot or is it not ...?

      The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

      One of my all time favorite quotes.

      Just another Perl hooker - My clients appreciate that I keep my code clean but my comments dirty.
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 03, 2017 at 09:14 UTC

    Once I understood equations relating to electromagnetism of James Clerk Maxwell during BS EE, no other (set of) equation(s) looked as beautiful.

    These days I am more inclined to ask for the soy sauce.

      I'm the same way, and it makes me feel a little sad to think about it, and even more sad when I try futilely to get back to that same understanding only to realize so much of the mathematical foundation required to understand them vacated my brain long ago as well. I suspect a lot of EE majors who actually bothered to really understand them at the time feel the same way.

      Do you remember feeling like you used to love what you do because of that sort of understanding and the ability to observe it in the world around you? Pepperidge Farm... er... perldigious remembers. Successfully bringing a practical design to fruition is a good feeling, but it only took me a few years out of college to figure out that the bulk of my career as an EE would instead be spent doing tedious paperwork, dealing with corporate bureaucracy and politics, and constantly trying to appease various members of $management who often have completely conflicting goals and nearly all of whom ultimately only have the goal of staying in power or acquiring more.

      That last link is sort of long, but it's very good and he ties everything back to business and the general world outside of politics at the end. My friend sent it to me when I was lamenting to him that, "I just want autonomy, freedom over myself, and I just don't get why the overwhelming majority of people in the world seem to want authority over others. So yes, I do have an 'authority problem', the authorities in question are just framing the problem differently than me. If one of them tells me to jump off the building with nothing but an umbrella to break my fall, I'm going to insist they 'lead by example' first to get my 'buy in'."

      Just another Perl hooker - My clients appreciate that I keep my code clean but my comments dirty.

        Do you remember feeling like you used to love what you do because of that sort of understanding and the ability to observe it in the world around you?

        Yes, as a programmer (for fun & profit) I sometimes do think that something could be solved/eased by programming. For example, I was filing a form at a branch office; data from that form would be entered by hand to be transferred to the main office. Reply to my question of why not add required software & network to do this was that status quo gives local branch more control; there is nobody hovering around.

        In some other instances, I often think that installing a programming environment (& learning whichever programming language) would make life of otherwise non-programmers (or, "I am not a computer person"-people) much easier.

        When I was involved in (amateur) photography, I was nearly always finding if a image would be better with this perspective or that angle; fully open aperture or 1-2 stops down, etc. Also, somebody's image could have improved by just a bit of editing (increase in contrast; cropping; etc).

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by fishy (Friar) on Aug 16, 2017 at 16:26 UTC
    Every little child, because of their natural-born curiosity:

    Nephew asked: Uncle, why you don't have a car?
    Uncle answered: Because cars smell bad.
    Nephew said: So, don't start it!

      Nephew to Auntie: Why do you have Uncle?

      Auntie: What do you mean?

      Nephew: He smells bad and he said ...

        ...he will browse the UK with his new titanium micro scooter.
        Auntie: Whaaat? Wait a second... Keep up with your Perl exercises...
        Nephew: Mum said I can skip the smart-match operator!
        Auntie: Ok. I will be back in a few minutes... Did you get the diamond operator?
        Nephew: Yeees...!!
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by Ratazong (Monsignor) on Aug 05, 2017 at 08:56 UTC
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by eighty-one (Curate) on Aug 02, 2017 at 15:53 UTC

      No. Choose [] Other (please explain why)

      «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

      perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by Lady_Aleena (Priest) on Aug 28, 2017 at 00:28 UTC

    My favorite scientist is my niece who is a high schooler who got two experiments into space already.

    No matter how hysterical I get, my problems are not time sensitive. So, relax, have a cookie, and a very nice day!
    Lady Aleena
      "...my niece...got two experiments into space already."

      This sounds great. But remember: "Other (please explain why)".

      Perhaps you can provide some details/links etc?

      Best regards, Karl

      «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

      perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by iguanodon (Priest) on Aug 28, 2017 at 12:25 UTC

      I agree with you; Tesla was an amazing man.

      But I disagree with the narrative you linked in one respect: having an earth-shattering, world-changing idea, but forgetting to write it down is really dumb.

      Having a raft of of them, but failing to have the nounce to employ a doucheXXX to monetize them for you, is really, really dumb.

      My Dad's favorite aphorism: it takes all sorts to make the world.


      With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". The enemy of (IT) success is complexity.
      In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. Suck that fhit
        I hear you. I love The Oatmeal but that is only one side of the story. By all accounts Tesla was an odd duck, a brilliant scientist but not a good business man.

        "...Tesla was an amazing man."

        But he came to a miserable end:

        "...just ten or twelve feet away from us there was this old man feeding the pigeons. He was standing up, and the birds were fluttering all around him, landing on his head and arms, dozens of cooing pigeons, shitting on his clothes and eating out of his hands, and the old man kept talking to them, calling the birds his darlings, his sweethearts, his angels." (Thomas Effing about Tesla in the novel "Moon Palace" by Paul Auster)

        May be that this is yet another fake, who knows ;-)

        «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

        perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

        Mr ++Tesla didn't write them down because greedy people wanted his ideas for their own monetary gain.

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 13, 2017 at 17:12 UTC

        Or, maybe, see Pi. Shhhhhh!

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 07, 2017 at 22:40 UTC
    Ernest Rutherford for singing in the lab when results were good.
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by LanX (Saint) on Aug 29, 2017 at 16:55 UTC
      "... Albert Einstein for exploiting his popularity to pick up women."

      Women are very generous - even if one suffers from bromadrosis. And i always wondered if there is some dick/brain correlation.

      «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

      perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 16, 2017 at 21:34 UTC
    Gregor Mendel for playing with food despite his mother Charles Darwin for invinting distant cousins to join us
Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on Dec 12, 2017 at 13:28 UTC

    May be i forgot Ivan Sutherland for Sketchpad. Any TX-2 veterans here?

    «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

    perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

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