Rank history's top scientists

[KittenKoder]

Imhotep.

 

[eots]

Sigmund Freud

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trdVXdZr3Fw]YouTube - The Biography of Sigmund Freud (Part 1 of 5)[/ame]

 

[Cecilie1200]

Nikola Tesla. More of an inventor I guess, but his inventions were scientific.

I'd say a truly brilliant inventor would have to have a solid grounding in science to accomplish anything.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, Copernicus and Galileo together, Jonas Salk, Marie Curie.

 

[waltky]

Why doesn't everyone know who Nikola Tesla was?...

Nikola Tesla: The patron saint of geeks?
10 September 2012 - Fans have rallied to buy the lab of inventor and electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla to turn it into a museum. But why do so few people appreciate the importance of Tesla's work?

Lots of people don't know who Nikola Tesla was. He's less famous than Einstein. He's less famous than Leonardo. He's arguably less famous than Stephen Hawking. Most gallingly for his fans, he's considerably less famous than his arch-rival Thomas Edison. But his work helped deliver the power for the device on which you are reading this. His invention of the induction motor that would work with alternating current (AC) was a milestone in modern electrical systems. Mark Twain, whom he later befriended, described his invention as "the most valuable patent since the telephone".

Tesla was on the winning side in the War of the Currents - the battle between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison to establish whether AC or direct current (DC) would be used for electricity transmission. But as far as posterity goes, time has not been kind to Tesla. Born in what is now Croatia to Serbian parents, he moved to New York in 1884 and developed radio controlled vehicles, wireless energy and the first hydro-electric plant at Niagara Falls. But he was an eccentric. He believed celibacy spurred on the brain, thought he had communicated with extraterrestrials, and fell in love with a pigeon.

Over recent decades he has drifted into relative obscurity, while Edison is lauded as one of the world's greatest inventors. But his memory is kept alive by legions of "geeks" and science historians. A Tesla museum on the site of his former laboratory is being planned after a crowdfunding project orchestrated by The Oatmeal cartoon site. It raised more than its target of $850,000 - which will be matched by the New York state authorities - in the first week. The total is now well over $1m. A possible biopic starring Christian Bale and directed by Mike Newell is doing the rounds of the Hollywood rumour mill.

The crowdfunding idea was the brainchild of Matthew Inman, the cartoonist behind The Oatmeal. Inman heard of the museum appeal and decided to help. Tesla is a hero, he argues who "drop-kicked humanity into a second industrial revolution". His triumph was his work on systems for AC. Edison's DC worked well for lighting but could not be used to transmit electricity for long distances. AC was backed by the Westinghouse Corporation. Its voltage could be stepped up and down easily so it could be transported over long distances at high voltage, using a lower current and therefore losing less energy in transit. The stumbling block for AC had been motors. But Tesla's design for an induction motor and transformer cleared the way. It's enough to justify a fair measure of adulation, says Inman.

More BBC News - Nikola Tesla: The patron saint of geeks?

 

[ScienceRocks]

The top scientist are 90% white or east Asian. Fact.

Heres a list I put together
White history-inventions page 2 - Science and world events Wiki

1775 French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère was born in Lyon, France. He is generally regarded as one of the main discoverers of electromagnetism. The ampere, a unit of measurement of electric current, is named after him.

Ctesibius (3rd century BC) was a Classical Greek inventor who won fame for his invention of a number of devices using the pressure created by air and water. He used water weights, or containers made heavy by filling them with water, and compressed air, to construct an air-powered catapult. His most famous invention was the great improvement he made to the ancient Egyptian clepsydra, or water clock, in which water dripping into a container at a steady rate raised a float that carried a pointer to mark the hours. He equipped the float with a rack that turned a toothed wheel and made the clock work a number of adornments: whistling birds, moving puppets, ringing bells, and other gadgets. The accuracy of Ctesibius's water clock was only eventually surpassed in 1657 by the pendulum clock of Dutch inventor Christiaan Huygens, but the spirit of Ctesibius's clock still survives in the cuckoo clock.

• Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was not only a great artist but also a stunningly advanced inventor whose surviving documents and manuscripts are filled with designs for many of the machines regarded as 19th or 20th century inventions, but were in fact modeled in his 16th century plans. These designs included: portable bridges; cannons; armored vehicles; a submarine; an underwater diving suit; and models for aircraft.

• James Watt (1736-1819) was a Scottish inventor who won renown for his development of the first viable steam engine, a device which had originally been invented by the English engineers Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen. The first steam engines were thundering devices which were used to pump water from mines.

• Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was an English physicist who pioneered the use of vaccines, most notably against smallpox.

• Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-99) was a German chemist who invented the spectroscope and discovered spectrum analysis which led to the discovery of the elements cesium and rubidium. Bunsen also discovered (1834) the antidote that is still used today for arsenic poisoning. Although his name was given to the Bunsen burner, he did not develop that device. He did however invent a number of other devices, including: the ice calorimeter; the filter pump; and the zinc-carbon electric cell.

• Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) was a British mechanical engineer and inventor who is regarded as the father of railway travel. In 1796, he developed the first mobile steam engines, vastly improving James Watt's steam engines, and by 1801, had transported the first passengers on one of his steam engines. By 1804, his steam engines were running on tracks and the age of rail travel had arrived.

• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Apart from his contributions to the American War of Independence and the writing of the American constitution, Franklin also won fame for devising the first anti-pollution measures with devices to control smoking chimneys and in 1744, invented the Franklin stove, which furnished greater heat with a reduced consumption of fuel. His most famous discovery came in 1747, when he proved that lighting was an electrical phenomena. He also invented the lightning rod.

 

[ScienceRocks]

• Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931). His inventions include: the practical electric light bulb; an electric generating system; the phonograph, a sound recording device using a round cylinder - he would later adapt it to record on a flat disc - the record player; and the motion picture projector or Kinetoscope. By synchronizing his phonograph and Kinetoscope, he produced, in 1913, the first talking moving pictures.

In 1882, he developed and installed the world's first large central electric-power station, located in New York City. He also developed a commercial version of the battery; the mimeograph, the microtasimeter (used for the detection of minute changes in temperature), and a wireless telegraphic method for communicating with moving trains.

Altogether, Edison patented more than 1000 inventions.

• Charles Franklin Kettering (1876-1958). Kettering invented some of the most recognizable items of modern life. They include: the electric automatic starter which he built specifically for automobiles, but later used for many other applications; the first electronic cash register, developed while he was working for the National Cash Register (NCR) company; the first engine powered electricity generator, today widely used where ever mains electricity is not available; quick drying automobile paint; high octane and leaded petrol; a nonpoisonous coolant for refrigerators; and the first practical engine for diesel locomotives.

• Herbert Edwin Land (1909-91), who won fame through his work in polarized light: he developed a new kind of polarizer, which he called Polaroid, by aligning and embedding crystals in a plastic sheet. Starting his own laboratory at the age of 19, he started the Polaroid Corporation in 1937, which developed infrared filters, dark adaptation goggles and target finders. In the late 1940s, the corporation produced the first self-developing Polaroid Land camera.

• Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was a Scottish born American inventor who won fame for inventing the telephone; his other great invention which was just as important but for which he is not widely know, is the aileron, used in every aircraft. He founded the Bell Telephone Company and his descendants founded the National Geographic magazine.


The German engineer Nikolaus Otto (1832-1891) invented the first four stroke internal combustion engine in 1876, which rapidly replaced the steam engine as the primary source of power in virtually all applications, and paving the way for the development of the automobile. Jean Joseph Lenoir (1822-1900) was a Belgian-born French inventor famous for producing the first one cylinder internal combustion engine powered by kerosene in 1859, and the first internal-combustion-powered car.

Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) was a German engineer and inventor who assisted in the development of the Otto gasoline engine. In 1887, he patented the Daimler engine, a high-speed internal-combustion engine that was an important step in the development of the automobile. Daimler and German inventor, Wilhelm Maybach, mounted a gasoline-powered engine onto a bicycle, creating a motorcycle, in 1885. In 1887, they manufactured their first car, which included a steering lever and a four-speed gearbox. Another German engineer, Karl Benz, produced his first gasoline car in 1886. In 1926, Daimler, Maybach and Benz were to join together to form the Mercedes Benz brand name.

1815 English mathematician and philosopher George Boole was born in Lincoln Lincolnshire, England. He invented Boolean logic, which is the basis of modern digital computer logic, and is regarded as one of the founders of the field of computer science.

1879 German physicist Max von Laue was born in Berlin. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. He also made contributions to the fields of optics, crystallography, quantum theory, superconductivity, and the theory of relativity.

1773 English engineer George Cayley was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. He was one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics, and is considered to be the "Father of Aviation" and the "Father of Aerodynamics". He was the first true scientific aerial investigator and first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight. He designed the first successful glider to carry a human being aloft, and discovered and identified the four aerodynamic forces of flight - weight, lift, drag, and thrust which are in effect on any flight vehicle.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

1) Isacc Newton: Gravity, calculus, and the laws of mechanics. and motion Top dog. Game over.

2) Charles Darwin: No, dinosaurs did not live along side humans, and the earth is not 6000 years old.

3) Galileo: Rennassaince man, the poster child of enlightenment against the Church's ignorance and oppression.



For the women:

-Marie Curie: If I'm not mistaken, the only scientist in history who won two Nobel prizes in two different scientific fields.

Nikolai Tesla. Without him Edison would be a footnote in history.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Nikola Tesla. More of an inventor I guess, but his inventions were scientific.

He was 100% scientist and 50% engineer.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

when they're that brilliant, they're "eccentric".

I have to add Jonas Salk to the list.

Tesla was more than smart enough, but eccentric doesn't cover it.

On the plus side, he almost conned J. P. Morgan into building a power plant that would give away electricity.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

for mani:

Professor from Gilligan's Island.

I actually met a science legend once.

I met Jane Goodall. That was cool. She smelled like chimpanzee.

I met Clyde Tombaugh, we used to go to his house once a month.