In the other thread was asked about who was the greatest scientist of all time. This is the same question but regarding exclusively modern times. Opinions? I´m presuming the majority vote for Einstein 1900-1950, so let´s hear who´s the second!

I'd go with Paul Dirac for 1900-1950. No clue really about 1950-2000 so I'll just throw out Steven Weinberg or Richard Feynman. 2000-2010... Ed Witten?

If you include mathematicians I'd say Terry Tao is in there somewhere.

Oh Murray Gell-Mann too for the 1950-2000 group. And I realize I'm slanting towards physicists but I can't really think of any discoveries outside of physics that have the same "magnitude" in terms of intellectual accomplishment as advances in quantum mechanics/QFT/particle theory.

I'd nominate Hilbert and E.Cartan for mathematics

How about Craig Venter for 2000-2010, biology/medicine?

Mathematicians are a different thread, imo.

Mathematics has some, but not all, of the necessary components of a science.

I like to include mathematics.

You have to include mathematics since it falls under every definition of "science" that people put forth in the thread "what is science?"

bill nye ftw

Joking? An image you posted in that thread:



The characteristic step of science, test with an experiment, does not apply to mathematics.

OK, leave the mathematics out then

Paul Dirac, who synthesized much of physics around 1930.

I don't know what parameters you use to measure great scientist, but if based on impact surely Alexander Flemming for the discovery of penicillin should rank high yet it hasn't been named here nor in the other thread.

He might not have actually been a great scientist and had a lot of help, but as far as impact of discoveries Penicillin should be ranked really high if not highest.

I agree with this

I also think the discovery of DNA was quite important but as a physicist would not go as far as to say you had to be the greatest scientist to discover it, and it wasn't just one person, and James wattson is a bit of a dick.

Max Planck...

I'm a biologist, and no way. A biologist should never be considered the greatest scientist IMO. There's little in biology that a layman can't understand, and there are few biological discoveries that could not have been made by almost anyone.

I agree. In physics, a few geniuses are feeding everyone from their palm. About the most fundamental laws that exist. Everything else seems like plain labour in comparison.

This is mostly a phenomenon of 1860 to 1960 or thereabouts. Other fields have gone through similar periods of predominant influence.

History shall decide.

i believe most people felt that any thorough knowledge of a field could be considered a science

anyway greatest scientist from 1900 to 1950:
Erwin Schrödinger


greatest scientist from 1950 to 2000:
dunno yet

If you are going to include Witten, you are sort of forced to put him in the 1950-2000 bracket. I personally would take him over Weinberg, Feynman and Gell-Mann and put him in the same class as Dirac and maybe Heisenberg. Einstein gets his own level by himself. If you are going to add math, there are a couple people who should be ahead of Tao and alot equal to him.

There are almost too many names to do it in math and I am sure to leave people out but:

1900-1950: Andre' Weil
Hilbert
Godel... actually there are way too many here so i am just going to stop

1950-2000: Grothendiek
Atiyah
Serre
Yau

2000-2010: Perleman
Ngo Bau Chau (he could move up alot depending on what happens with Langlands)

Rest: Tao, Bhargava, Jacob Lurie, Avila?(I don't know much about what he does, but his name always comes up in future Fields Medal winner discussions)

Von Neumann deserves a lot of love in 1900-1950, no question. Gromov should be at least mentioned under 1950-2000.

I feel comfortable in saying that Tao has been the most productive mathematician of this decade (although of course Poincare was the biggest solved problem of the decade). Maybe Oded Schramm (unfortunately deceased) should be mentioned for his work on SLE under 'Rest'. Ditto for Bourgain.

Yeah, Von Neumann is in there to. Gromov should have probably got a mention, (especially since I worked for awhile on gromov-witten invariants) but the competition is pretty sick for 1950-2000.

Perelman also has his amazing proof of the Soul Conjecture. I think you pretty much have to give 2000-2010 to Perleman, he could have written like 15 important papers on the Poincare Conjecture alone. And the rest was not necessarily for 2000-2010 but people who could be on the list for 2000-2020 etc.

Max Planck 1900-1950

Richard Feynman 1950-2000

jury is still out 2000-2010

I wasn't trying to supercede your 'Rest' list, just add to it. 1950-2000 is pretty sick but I feel like Grothendieck/Atiyah/Serre/Gromov are gonna be in a ton of people's top 5 lists (much more often than Yau, imo).

As with every conversation we have about Tao v Perelman, I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree!

By the way, it looks like Tao has over 200 papers between 2000 and 2010, pretty amazing.

I would actually bet against this. There work overlaps quite a bit but I think alot of people would mention Yau just because he is still so active and has been such a huge part the math department at Harvard as well as all the stuff he has done in China. I'm not saying that he should move up the list for those reasons, just that his name is more likely to come up because of them if you poll people.

how come my man erwin gets no love?