Who is/was the world's greatest scientist?

It would be a definite stretch to call them "greatest" (or even a "scientists") but Leucippus' / Democritus' theory about how everything was made up of unseen tiny "atoms" that somehow stuck together was amazingly prescient.
 

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Interesting discussion, and there's a fine point about medical/agricultural discoveries. But I'd still have to go with either Newton or Darwin. Without what they did (or several someones else doing the same things, like Liebniz and others with calculus), pretty much none of the other scientific work would really have been possible or made sense. If forced to pick between the two, I'd go with Newton --- there is a real sense that mathematics, and largely calculus, is the language that describes pretty much all of science.
 


Morrus said:
It's interesting that we tend to be looking backwards for greatness, rather than modern times.
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Much of the reasons we're looking backwards is because we see how things have progressed and built on what those older scientists started. We're seeing the skyscraper built on their foundations.

People discovering and creating things today have only laid the foundation. It will be a while before we can see exactly what can be built on their discoveries and creations.

Bullgrit
 

Morrus said:
It's interesting that we tend to be looking backwards for greatness, rather than modern times. We do that for other things, too, I guess. Is that because the further back we go, the greater the number of potential massive fundamental discoveries is?
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In a word: yes. My professors (several of them, at different times) noted that not only do we stand on the shoulders of giants, but those giants did all the easy stuff!

In addition, part of our measure of "great science" is impact upon either our lives, or the world of science in general. That takes time to see. We really don't know the impact of stuff discovered last week.
 

Umbran said:
In a word: yes. My professors (several of them, at different times) noted that not only do we stand on the shoulders of giants, but those giants did all the easy stuff!
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Such stuff may look "easy" by the standards of today. In their time, it may not have been.

For example, mathematicians from antiquity didn't always have the formal notation to express their ideas. So they had to write it out in words, and not equations. (Such as Al-Khwarizmi).

http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Arabic_mathematics.html
 

I suggest several of the Muslim scholars like Ibn al-Haytham of the 10-11th centuries who went a long way towards defining the scientific method.

Or Roger Bacon who helped weave the concepts together for Europe.
 



This is a tough one for me.

For me, Sagan is way up there. While his contribution to science is not as great as some, it was his love of science and his ability to transfer that love of science to his audience that, to me, was his greatest contribution. If it wasn't for Sagan, I don't think I'd have the love of science that I do.

Einstein is also pretty high on my list. It was through his contributions that our understanding of the universe that we can see is as defined as it is.

Stephen Hawking is almost as high on my list as Einstein, but I will admit a little bias in the fact that I have gobs and gobs of respect for that man. My grandmother died of ALS, and he has lived with it most of his life. Not only that, but look at some of the brilliance he achieved, even with his handicap! Mad props, man...

I also think that the man who invented microwave ovens should be honored. Without him, I would not have survived my bachelor years...
 

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