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Favorite Scientists


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Gotta have Richard Feynman in there.

Strongly recommend his autobio, Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!...

I like Richard Feynman quite a bit, if not for anything else then the Feynman integral. A couple of great bios on him is Genius (Pantheon) and The Beat of a Different Drum (Oxford). Gleick's 'Genius' is easier to read then Mehra's 'Drum,' which goes into the physics and math in more detail.

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One of my math profs studied with Kurt Godel at the Advanced Institute of Study back in the mid 70's. One story he shared was that Godel and Einstein liked to watch Disney flicks at the theater together on the weekends. I think he said that this was in the late 40's early 50's.

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Carl Sagan... for a whole bunch of reasons, the first of which is for writing one of my favorite books The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

He went to high school, here in the town I live in.

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One of those 'steins, anyway...

Frankenstein?

Yeah, him!

I like Leo Szillard. He was the prototypical head-in-the-clouds scientist.

(Leo Szillard is another favorite; right on, conn!)

Szilard, not only because his name is an anagram for "lizards" but also because he wrote some great science fiction stories as well as being a great nuclear physicist (the guy who thought up the chain reaction!).

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wanted to post the story of Poincare convincing his brother President Poincare to make a better professorship for some famous Polish?Czech? scientist (Riesz?) one of France's reparation claims after WW I, but can't find any details... anyone knows whether this true/ knows the details?

personal favorite Magician/Mathematician Persi Diaconis

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004...iaconis-69.html

speaking of Gödel, :tup:tup for recently deceased Paul Cohen

(His twin sons Steven and Eric played the Dancing Twins on the TV show Ally McBeal, i learn on wikipedia)

(and Cantor and Hausdorff and..., no physicists on this list, never REALLY understood why people bother with this type of stuff; appreciate computers and electric light though)

Edited by Niko
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wanted to post the story of Poincare convincing his brother President Poincare to make a better professorship for some famous Polish?Czech? scientist (Riesz?) one of France's reparation claims after WW I, but can't find any details... anyone knows whether this true/ knows the details?

Henri Poincaré died in 1912 so can reasonably doubt about the accuracy of the story ;)

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Gotta have Richard Feynman in there.

Strongly recommend his autobio, Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!...

I like Richard Feynman quite a bit, if not for anything else then the Feynman integral. A couple of great bios on him is Genius (Pantheon) and The Beat of a Different Drum (Oxford). Gleick's 'Genius' is easier to read then Mehra's 'Drum,' which goes into the physics and math in more detail.

I recall the Gleick book to be a very good read.

No love for Niels?

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One of those 'steins, anyway...

Frankenstein?

Yeah, him!

I like Leo Szillard. He was the prototypical head-in-the-clouds scientist.

(Leo Szillard is another favorite; right on, conn!)

Szilard, not only because his name is an anagram for "lizards" but also because he wrote some great science fiction stories as well as being a great nuclear physicist (the guy who thought up the chain reaction!).

Yes indeed. That's almost like coming up with...the hamburger or something!

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Gotta have Richard Feynman in there.

Strongly recommend his autobio, Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!...

I like Richard Feynman quite a bit, if not for anything else then the Feynman integral. A couple of great bios on him is Genius (Pantheon) and The Beat of a Different Drum (Oxford). Gleick's 'Genius' is easier to read then Mehra's 'Drum,' which goes into the physics and math in more detail.

I recall the Gleick book to be a very good read.

No love for Niels?

Bohr was obviously a great physicist and great interpreter of abstract results, but in my view not quite a revolutionary in the field. He definitely makes the short list (most Nobel winners do, I suppose), but not, IMO, the REAL short list.

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How can you people ignore Isaac Newton? I mean, that fig thing alone was pure genius...

I'm leaving him out on the grounds that he was a looney tune. But he's right up there, of course: The three laws of motion, the Principia, the law of gravition, that town in Massachusetts, not to mention the fig thing...

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