7 ms·

> When was the last time a self-made engineer, scientist or doctor was president? Ever? Your best bets would be Carter, Hoover and Jefferson.

jeffwass 10y ago
Albert Einstein was offered the second presidency of Israel, unsolicited, to succeed Israel's first president Chaim Weizman. He declined.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  It would have been a nightmare for Einstein. He was a scientist, lover, and musician at heart. He even, while not officially rebuking Israel, was very critical of it. The right wing ideology and cultural/racial monopoly/supremacy, especially.
  - rat87 10y ago
    This doesn't give enough context while he was critical of certain things and of the then weak right wing parties that were the predecessors of today's Israeli right he was a big supporter of Israel especially as a fundraiser He was on the board of deputies of Hebrew University and donated his papers to it
    - wallace_f 10y ago
      Yes that is true. I didn't say he disapproved of Israel. I think we're in agreement: as you said, he disapproved of the right-wing predecessors of modern-day Israel. He was very, very critical of them, and even compared them to Nazi Germany (his words). >a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. source: https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948 https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYork... Today it's not hard to find op-eds criticizing Einstein as being "wrong" on this.
- rat87 10y ago
  Note that the presidency of Israel is a mostly symbolic role(like a less important Queen of Britain), the political power rests with the Prime Minister
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
If Balaji Srinivasan becomes head of the FDA, he'd be the one of the few who is an engineer, scientist, and doctor (non-medical). He holds a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford and taught data mining, statistics, and computational biology. He has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Nature Reviews Genetics. He's a legit polymath. Disclaimer: I went to school/am friends with him. I'm a software engineer and he's also a better coder than me and he still gives me shit for using an IDE rather than emacs =P

jeffwass 10y ago

Albert Einstein was offered the second presidency of Israel, unsolicited, to succeed Israel's first president Chaim Weizman. He declined.

wallace_f 10y ago
It would have been a nightmare for Einstein. He was a scientist, lover, and musician at heart. He even, while not officially rebuking Israel, was very critical of it. The right wing ideology and cultural/racial monopoly/supremacy, especially.
- rat87 10y ago
  This doesn't give enough context while he was critical of certain things and of the then weak right wing parties that were the predecessors of today's Israeli right he was a big supporter of Israel especially as a fundraiser He was on the board of deputies of Hebrew University and donated his papers to it
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    Yes that is true. I didn't say he disapproved of Israel. I think we're in agreement: as you said, he disapproved of the right-wing predecessors of modern-day Israel. He was very, very critical of them, and even compared them to Nazi Germany (his words). >a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. source: https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948 https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYork... Today it's not hard to find op-eds criticizing Einstein as being "wrong" on this.
rat87 10y ago
Note that the presidency of Israel is a mostly symbolic role(like a less important Queen of Britain), the political power rests with the Prime Minister

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

If Balaji Srinivasan becomes head of the FDA, he'd be the one of the few who is an engineer, scientist, and doctor (non-medical). He holds a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford and taught data mining, statistics, and computational biology. He has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Nature Reviews Genetics. He's a legit polymath. Disclaimer: I went to school/am friends with him. I'm a software engineer and he's also a better coder than me and he still gives me shit for using an IDE rather than emacs =P