How many scientists can you name?

Many, I have a science degree and have always been interested in the history of science.
A few that spring to mind as important that your average man of the street may not be aware of are:

Murray Gell-Mann - discovered quarks
Frank Wilczek - helped come up with quantum chromodynamics.
Paul Dirac - for me one of the most brilliant mathematical physicists to have ever lived.
Wolfgang Pauli - Did some great work contributing to the development on quantum mechanics.
Ed Witten - Done a lot of work related to string theory and, like Dirac, a brilliant mathematical physicist.

I read this book a while back and would recommend it for anyone even vaguely interested in science.
 
Angilion said:
It struck me while I was walking home from work that scientists are very rarely well known despite the profound effect they have had on humanity.

So...how many can you name solely from memory? Only 16 in my case.
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Archimaedes, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Copernicus, Da Vinci, Darwin, Descartes, Edison, Tesla, Einstein, Newton, Planck, Rontgen, Sagan, B. Franklin, Galileo, Curie, Bohr, Ampere, Lamarck, Mendeleev, Jenner, Rutherford, Bell, Volta, Celsius, De-Forest, Diesel, Faraday, Galvani, Hawking, Joliot-Curie, Joule, Ohm, A. Muller, Latimer, Lord Kelvin, de Ferrranti, Brian Cox, H. Cavendish, Hopwood-Jeans, R.Penrose,Freeman Dyson, Dirac, Dalton, Francis Mott, H. Mosley, T. Jefferson, Pasteur, Mendel, Crick, Watt, Freud, Kepler, Claude Bernard, Boas, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, E. Rutherford, Herschel, Hubble, Fermi, Euler, Huygens,Haller, Halley, J. Watson, Feynman, Von Neumann, Euclid, Ehrlich, W. Bayliss, Chomsky, Sanger, Lucreitius, Piaget, Levi-Strauss, Selye, Elion, Oppenheimer, E. Teller, Libby, Haeckel, Koch, Hippocrates, Eratothenes, Galen, Pascal, R. Hooke, Humboldt, Babbage, Pavlov, Cousteau, Philoponus, R. Bacon, Grimaldi, Seno, Sedgewick.......

I can't be bothered any more.
 
Tunney said:
Famous scientists or do some of my friends count? :p

If I was to be pedantic, I'd point out that people like Archimedes weren't scientists. Scientific methodology wasn't invented until Newton's time so anyone who came before that is really a natural philosopher.
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If I were to be pedantic I would say that Scientific methodolgy was in fact laid down by Aristotle (384-322BC) in his Laws of Logic, which perfected Observation based on Analysis, which remains the standard for scientific thought today.

Ibn al-Haythem (965-1039) an Arab Polymath and scientist further developed Scientisfic method, followed by such luminaries as Galileo who rewrote the book on methodology.

So they were indeed Scientists, as well as Philosophers, Thinkers, Mathematicians, etc...but they followed some form of scientific methodology be it Classical Model, Pragmatic Model or Computational Model, all are valid methodogies given the time in which they were practiced.
 
I'd probably get to about 15 or so before starting to struggle which is really a shockingly low number considering what scientists have done in advancing human knowledge.

You can probably sum it up much as M. Cartmill did when he said "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.".
 
Newton
Darwin
Einstein
Fleming
Hawkins
Galileo

Seem to have forgotten loads. I can think of things people have invented but not their names =/
 
semi-pro waster said:
I'd probably get to about 15 or so before starting to struggle which is really a shockingly low number considering what scientists have done in advancing human knowledge.
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That was what I thought, although reading posts from other people showed me that my initial limit of 16 was only a temporary failure of memory because I knew almost all the names.

I'm going to try it at work next week. I think most replies will be along the lines of "Einstein" and "that man in a wheelchair, what's his name?" and that's it.
 
Jessica-Jane Clement
Megan Fox
these 2 can do something weird...when they remove their clothes they can actually alter the appearence of your body without touching you.

no male scientist is capable of duplicating this.
 
Amnesia said:
Jessica-Jane Clement
Megan Fox
these 2 can do something weird...when they remove their clothes they can actually alter the appearence of your body without touching you.

no male scientist is capable of duplicating this.
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That would depend entirely on your sexual orientation now wouldn't it.

Besides Megan Fox.....nope, look at her thumbs. :(
 
Newton
Einstein
Darwin
Dawkins
Bohr
Planck
Galileo
Hawking
Fahrenheit
Pythagoras
Knuth
Vinci (I'm sure he counts)
Coulomb

and probably more but I'm getting tired of thinking of them all.
 
Amnesia said:
Jessica-Jane Clement
Megan Fox
these 2 can do something weird...when they remove their clothes they can actually alter the appearence of your body without touching you.

no male scientist is capable of duplicating this.
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I'm sure Mr. Berners-Lee had a hand in it for many people. :p
 
Castiel said:
That would depend entirely on your sexual orientation now wouldn't it.

Besides Megan Fox.....nope, look at her thumbs. :(
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Ah the science of looking at the thumbs of a naked girl before her naked body, thats called homosexualopothy isn't it?

I have heard of almost 90% of the scientist so far and most seem to be physicists. Given a while I'm sure I could go through history remembering a fair amount.
I'd have to disagree and say scientist are some of the most well know people of their times, apart from maybe writers or musicians and the odd painter.
:)
 
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