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Who are your science heroes?

Which scientists (in any field) do you most admire, either for their achievements, their efforts to increase awareness of science or simply their personality?

Simply because they're the first three that came to mind (there could be so many others), I'm going to pick...

Sophie Germain - who, despite living in an era when women were strongly discouraged from receiving education and being unable to make a career in science due to misogyny, became one of the most respected mathematicians and physicists of the late 18th/early 19th Centuries thanks to her work on Fermat's last Theorem and elasticity theory.

Richard Feynman - in addition to his revolutionary work in physics, Feynman was also one of the first (and most effective) popularisers of science. He also gave us one of the greatest stories in science: when a student told him that his mother disagreed with him that physics was the most important thing in the world and begged him to write to her, Feynman agreed. In his letter, he wrote "Your son informs me that you do not believe physics is the most important thing in the world. You are absolutely correct - love is."

Srinivasa Ramanujan - despite having no formal training, Ramanujan's mathematics impressed G.H. hardy so much that he received a personal invitation to Cambridge, where he faced great prejudice before literally blowing everyone away with the sheer quality of his work.

Jnei 8 Mar 29
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32 comments

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1

Rachel Carlson
Mother of the ecology movement.
Sounded the alarm

8

Hedy Lamarr, she invented the method of frequency hopping that allowed for allied torpedo's. Because she was an actress no one took her seriously and it wasn't adopted until the 1960's, today it makes cell phones and Bluetooth possible.

8

Charles Darwin (a lovely man, apparently), Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins.

Almost exactly the same I added Michelle Thaller

Did you manage to meet Charles Darwin or is it Richard Dawkins

@Rosh I didn't meet him personally but I went to his house and saw the staircase slide he built for his children and various other aspects of his life. Apart from admiring his achievements, he is one of the few people I would like to have met.

7

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. ?

A few of my favorites: Carl Sagan (great scientist, educator, and communicator), Richard Feynman (brilliant, yet maintained a remarkably full, balanced life), Marie Curie (sacrificed her health for the sake of her important research), Nikola Tesla (a true visionary who understood the world in ways we're still grappling with).

6

So Many...
Hawkin is way up there. Darwin, Einstein, Turing, Curie, Tesla... the list keeps growing.
Brian Cox has been mentioned and I adore him. He's got this way of explaining complex concepts without dumming them down. I watch and rewatch his talks...
I would also include Brian Green for similar reasons. He's a pretty dynamic person and is a great conveyor of ideas.
Can't forget Roberta Bondar - Absolutely delightful and inspiring woman, (Astronaut/Neurologist/Photographer) whom I had the pleasure of meeting not long ago.

6

Hypatia, a female Greek philosopher
Gallelio who first looked at the heavens with a telescope.
Michael Faraday, who was born a pesant and became a world renoun scientist and invented the electric motor and generator.
Sir Issac Newton who invented calculus to understand how an apple falls.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt who discovered how Cepheid variable stars can be used to measure astronomical distances.
Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin who discovered how to measure the kinds of elements in stars and the amounts of them.
Einstein
Fritz Zwicky discovered dark matter in 1933.
Isaac Aisamov who wrote science texts and other books that span 10 of the 11 major categories in the card catalogue numbering system.
Hawking
Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
And others.

5

British physicist Brian Cox became a household name in the U.K. in less than a decade, thanks to his accessible explanations of the universe in TV and radio shows, books and public appearances.Love his style nd his band

Stephen Hawking (1942– ): His books’ titles suggest the breadth and boldness of his ideas: The Universe in a Nutshell, The Theory of Everything. “My goal is simple,” he has said. “It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.” he was just genius

Richard Dawkins (1941– ): The biologist, a charismatic speaker, first gained public notoriety in 1976 with his book The Selfish Gene, one of his many works on evolution. Love reading his books reading The God Delusion

Rosh Level 7 Mar 29, 2018

I do like Cox - as you say, he's done superb work in popularising science and getting new people interested.

@Jnei so true when science was losing its footing in society

@SACatWalker- all great people have to leave at some point but he left a legacy

Good List!!
I've been a fan of Brian Cox for years. I've been watching his BBS shows wherever I can, his TEDTalks as well. He seems very relatable and able to convey complex theories & concepts to the general public without talking down to them.
I love this guy.
Hawkin & Dawkins are also high on my list.

4

I could list over 100 but I'll just include the ones who I think affected my knowlege base the most. Tesla, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Galilleo, Higgs, Curie,Turing, Planck, Bohr, Feynman, Hawking, Maxwell, Shrodinger, Heisenberg, Dawkins, and Guth.

4

Richard Feynman

4

Of course, Sagan, Hawking, and Tyson. Tesla, Curie, Turing, Lamarr. Also Ada Lovelace, to whom computers owe a lot, and Michio Kaku, whose book made quantum physics understandable to a maths-impaired like me.

4

I will always be hot for Tesla

Gotta love Tesla 🙂

I'm a lesbian and I'm hot for Tesla.

@memorylikeasieve he has a certain electricity/energy about him

4

They say science eradicated polio. The first polio vaccine was the inactivated polio vaccine. It was developed by Jonas Salk and came into use in 1955. The oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin and came into commercial use in 1961. Cases due to wild poliovirus have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350 000 cases then, to 22 reported cases in 2017. As a result of the global effort to eradicate the disease, more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis.

Salk is my hero. He refused to patent his vaccine since he did not want to limit its use.

4

Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, and Jared Diamond. I'm mostly a biosciences geek.

3

Neil degrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss.

3

Bill Nye, Einstein, Tesla, Salk, Neil Degrasse Tyson, etc.

3

So many to list obviously among them the greats Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan and the list goes on. I would have to say Bill Nye , Michio Kaku and Lawrence Krauss. But my two favorites are Michelle Thaller and Janna Levin.

3

Wilhelm Reich knew the score when it came to politics, sex, and the consequences of repressive human cultures. his later work DID get a bit wacky, but his scientific intuitions were proved to be often correct. the o n l y victim of US Government mandated book burning - 'freedom', etc..

3

Tesla
Dawkins
Diamond

3

Darwin has to be top of my list. How he shook the world !! and still is. That is what I call "science changes all".

3

Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, and Neil Tyson have made signicant contributions in the expression of rationality.

jeffy Level 7 Mar 29, 2018
3

I ispired by marie curie and stephen hawkings.

FAIZ Level 5 Mar 29, 2018
3

dawkins is an asshole and terrible thought leadership for agnostics. and has no impact on the scientific community compared to his views on atheism.

einstein was brilliant as was hawking. hawking at least understood the importance of bringing people together with his works not alienating them which is exactly what dawkins does.

carl sagan was a humanist and in the same school as hawking.

2

Bill Nye the Science Guy!

2

Sam Harris, Elon Musk, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Jane Goodall, Alice Roberts, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, etc...

2

Oppenheimer, for being smart enough to open pandoras box and smart enough to wish he hadn't. Plus going all hindu was neat.

2

So many choices. All our knowledge is built on the shoulders of giants (even if the original quote was a bit of bastardry).

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