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Let N be the number of great scientists. It would be sensible for the curriculum to include the n greatest scientists, where n << N. Since Marie Curie always
by mhartl 19y ago
Let N be the number of great scientists. It would be sensible for the curriculum to include the n greatest scientists, where n << N. Since Marie Curie always gets included in the textbooks, we can conclude either that she ranks as one of the n greatest scientists, even for very small n, or that the reasons for her inclusion go beyond her scientific accomplishments. Considering how few history textbooks mention (for example) Euler, Gauss, Lagrange, Laplace, Lavoisier, Faraday, Dirac, Onsager, or Landau---whose scientific accomplishments all rival or surpass Curie's---it's safe to conclude (as Paul did) that the textbook writers include some non-scientific factors when deciding which scientists to include.
Let's face it: almost no one reading this knows who the hell Onsager and Landau are---but you probably should. (They were both giants of 20th-century physics.) No one disputes that Marie Curie was a great scientist, but that's not enough to account for her ubiquity in the textbooks. And since the most significant diff between Curie and Landau is gender, it's accurate to say that Curie gets included because she was female.
- noonespecial 18y agoShe also died as a result of her research. She carried glowing vials of radioactive goo in her pockets! I don't care what gender or race your are, her life is just a great story that is interesting as well as informative. This may have something to do with her ubiquity in addition to her gender.
- hugh 19y agoI don't think anyone is trying to deny that Curie gets a little more attention in the school curriculum and the popular mind just because she's a woman, but I think the point asnyder was making is that she at least has the distinction of being a great scientist, unlike George Washington Carver who (and I had to look him up, since having not been educated in the US I'd never really heard of this guy) doesn't seem to be in that category. Oh, and be careful with statements like "almost no one reading this knows who the hell Onsager and Landau are". There's a surprisingly large number of physicists reading this board.
- jganetsk 19y agoWe aren't talking about the users of this board, we are talking about the average American who went through the public education system. 99.9% of them have heard of George Washington Carver, but not of Onsager and Landau.
- hugh 19y agoOh, I interpreted "almost no one reading this knows..." as referring to the users of this board.
- mhartl 18y agoYour original interpretation was right. Perhaps I underestimated the number of physicists hanging out here. (I hope so! It would be cool to think people here know who these guys are.) In any case, the original point remains: even on Hacker News, Marie Curie is far better-known than Lev Landau, and it's not because she was the greater scientist.
- AndyKelley 18y agoI am not a physicist, and I have not heard of either of those guys, but I've heard of Curie and Carver.
- daniel_yokomizo 18y agoI have a Landau book in my hands right now ;)
- randomhack 18y agoYou forgot to mention Turing :) Turing doesnt get much space in school textbooks. And von Neumann too despite being one of the giants of mathematics in 20th century.
- stevecooperorg 18y agoCurie is included to inspire girls to become scientists. The textbooks provide both a record of history, and role models for students. I'm not entirely convinced that record-keeping should trump role models.
- varunachar 18y agoI'm sorry I don't know what these "points" mean. Please don't take whatever points are shown with my comment seriously: it's just the default value. I think Paul Dirac is insufficiently praised not only in the layman's world, but even in the scientific community. Although he was a contemporary of Albert Einstein and although his contributions were comparably important and various, Einstein enjoys a rock-star-like status, whereas Dirac is quite inadequately acknowledged. The same would hold for Arnold Sommerfeld, Leonhard Euler and many others, some of whose names and contributions I perhaps don't know about.