Who is your favourite scientist of all time?

PermaBanned said:
Fair enough, however anyone who makes such a choice should be well informed of his past, hence why i made the comment in the first place.
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yeah right!

PermaBanned said:
Do you? Or do you tell yourself that to avoid facing up to the fact that you took the easy way out?

Please don't take that the wrong way.
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You have no idea what you are talking about, living your nice comfortable life, in your nice comfortable room, with enough to eat, not fearing for your life on a daily basis, the opportunity to say what you want, the freedom to make choices without the risk of losing your life........

Stop being so arrogant and short-sighted and listen to those who know better than you that life is sometimes extremely dangerous and difficult and to survive and sometimes decisions have to be made that go against your principles and beliefs.




PermaBanned said:
Again with the vague and ambiguous statements :p

You could probably say that about anybody who's worked on a military programme. But beyond that, what, he had an affair? :D
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It is not a vague, ambiguous statement at all....it is what it is, that most of his peers consider him the pre-eminent rocket scientist in the world...simple.
 
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Superficial said:
The point was regarding WVB specifically and HIS intentions not the dozens of people that took his work and improved on it it then had there work improved upon.
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That goes for all tech and science. It's all built on and improved. There's very littel totaly new stuff and even the totally new stuff is usually found looking at or testing other theories.
 
Judgeneo said:
Lots of Eulers work couldn't be considered practical at the time, but is used everywhere now. The following list is pretty impressive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Leonhard_Euler

He was still able to do some of historys best mathematics when suffering from almost complete loss of sight.
Completely and utterly my favourite academic mind of all time.
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I agree with that - but we are talking about the here and now with the knowledge we have today.
 
Superficial said:
I accept that but I, at least, am trying to force practical justification.

I have clearly stated what I think that means also. Practical applications for humanity today.

imo many theoretical physicits for example should not be included.


I considered satellites...but imho it's going way too far to attribute all that to one man don't you think? and specifically regarding WVB (which was central to my point afterall) this has tenuous links.
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If the thread was about who we considered to be the greatest contributor to human endeavour in the field of science I would agree with you....but as it is about an individuals favourite scientist then the whole choice is subjective anyway and the poster has as much right to consider Von Braun his favourite scientist solely on the fact that his was the pre-eminent rocket scientist of his generation as I do Carl Sagan because I liked his TV show.

And disassembling his private life in some vain attempt to push an agenda of your (not yours personally I know) is disingenuous and pointless.
 
Castiel said:
Von Braun simply is not in the same ballpark as Mengele or Ishii or even his immediate superiors and objectively it is impossible to know how he felt or how he could have done anything differently than he did under the circumstances he found himself in. It is easy to judge without knowing the situation. Not everyone can or would sacrifice themselves on a principle, especially when doing so would have accomplished nothing besides his own death.
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Like I said I haven't got a problem with von Braun and how he was caught up in the German war machine and one day we could all easily find ourselves in a similar situation if WWIII broke out but my problem was how the Americans saved him and his henchmen and wiped the slate clean.
 
Dimple said:
Like I said I haven't got a problem with von Braun and how he was caught up in the German war machine and one day we could all easily find ourselves in a similar situation if WWIII broke out but my problem was how the Americans saved him and his henchmen and wiped the slate clean.
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Fair enough, although Permabanned is attacking the man, not the political decisions of the US Administration.
 
Glaucus said:
That goes for all tech and science. It's all built on and improved. There's very littel totaly new stuff and even the totally new stuff is usually found looking at or testing other theories.
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it does but not regarding WVB - to jump to satelites from rocket science designed for two purposes - manned flight (which was never really practical) and weaponry is too big a leap to name him as one of the greats but, it's all relative to your own perspective I suppose.
 
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Castiel said:
If the thread was about who we considered to be the greatest contributor to human endeavour in the field of science I would agree with you....but as it is about an individuals favourite scientist then the whole choice is subjective anyway and the poster has as much right to consider Von Braun his favourite scientist solely on the fact that his was the pre-eminent rocket scientist of his generation as I do Carl Sagan because I liked his TV show.

And disassembling his private life in some vain attempt to push an agenda of your (not yours personally I know) is disingenuous and pointless.
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Yeah - I admit to having 'gone off on one' so fair point.

Hopefully, at least, some will see where I am coming from.
 
Castiel said:
yeah right!
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Yeah... right.

Castiel said:
You have no idea what you are talking about, living your nice comfortable life, in your nice comfortable room, with enough to eat, not fearing for your life on a daily basis, the opportunity to say what you want, the freedom to make choices without the risk of losing your life........

Stop being so arrogant and short-sighted and listen to those who know better than you that life is sometimes extremely dangerous and difficult and to survive and sometimes decisions have to be made that go against your principles and beliefs.
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No. You're asking me to accept without understanding or questioning. I can't do that.

Also, i'm long sighted :p

Castiel said:
It is not a vague, ambiguous statement at all....it is what it is, that most of his peers consider him the pre-eminent rocket scientist in the world...simple.
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And yet you always include qualifiers. 'Probably', 'most'. I think many of his 'peers' would class Korolyev as at least his equal. It's impossible to imagine how different the world might be if he hadn't died when he did.
 
Judgeneo said:
Lots of Eulers work couldn't be considered practical at the time, but is used everywhere now. The following list is pretty impressive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Leonhard_Euler

He was still able to do some of historys best mathematics when suffering from almost complete loss of sight.
Completely and utterly my favourite academic mind of all time.
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Agreed, I named him as my favorite somewhere on the first page, glad someone else agrees!
 
Can I just say that I deliberately chose (after consideration) to ask who everyone's favourite scientist is, and not who they think the greatest scientist is, just to avoid this argument rearing its head. :p

I said that people can choose their favourite for whatever reason they choose, again, hoping to inspire a different kind of discussion. We can argue over who the greatest scientist is in another thread. ;)
 
PermaBanned said:
No. You're asking me to accept without understanding or questioning. I can't do that.

Also, i'm long sighted :p
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I'm not asking you to accept anything, just to stop judging people people when you clearly do not have either the experience or sense to realise that life is not as black and white as you think.

i now see that you admit you are making judgements without understanding what you are making them on anyway.

You made a judgement about someones choice and the scientist himself based on nothing more than your opinion, an opinion that was based not on the mans scientific ability in his given field, but your unqualified opinion on what should constitute a scientist.

The fact of the matter is, Von Braun is considered pre-eminent and widely thought of as being the greatest in his field, the poster chose him as his favourite scientist and as that is subjective to him, you had no right to either question his choice or to dismiss Von Braun as pre-eminent based on what you think he should have done in the face of Nazi political decision making.


PermaBanned said:
And yet you always include qualifiers. 'Probably', 'most'. I think many of his 'peers' would class Korolyev as at least his equal. It's impossible to imagine how different the world might be if he hadn't died when he did.
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Von Braun is accepted as pre-eminent in his field...this is a fact.
 
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PermaBanned said:
Don't mistake queries for judgements.
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I wasn't.

Anyway, enough derailing of the thread. Naffa has made it clear that his intention was to name your Favourite Scientist, not the Greatest Scientist and as that is entirely subjective to the individual your point was largely meaningless so it is pointless to keep banging on about it.
 
OK, now we've got that dispute out of the way, can we start nit-picking about how some people have chosen a natural philosopher rather than a scientist? :p
 
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