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I agree with you that popular vote is not something that can accurately select the "greatest genius". I'm also skeptical of these "greatest"/"No.1" rankings as

by nebula 18y ago

I agree with you that popular vote is not something that can accurately select the "greatest genius". I'm also skeptical of these "greatest"/"No.1" rankings as far as Scientists go; no matter who does the selection. You can definitely say that Einstein, Newton and a bunch of others are great scientists and contributed greatly to the progress of science. Why does one have to come up with rankings? these are more of a media hype in my opinion. "I'd venture that Newton was a greater genius for his time." I don't want to get into the trap of Newton Vs Einstein debate; However here are some reasons that IMO make Einstein's contribution to science a very important: When Newton declared that he was "standing on the shoulders of giants", it was literally true. Galileo with his experimental physics, and Kepler's work on planetary motion had pretty much figured out everything necessary for Newton's work on gravitation. Newton had to formalize these things and put a framework around. Newton's work here was incremental. OTOH, when Einstein entered the scene, Physics was in trouble. There were many things that classical physics couldn't explain. Though earlier works had pointed at the dichotomies in classical physics, no one was able to come up with a consistent theory to explain things. At this point in time, Einstein came with his fresh ideas and explained so many fundamental things like "what is gravity". Another important thing to note here is that the concepts Einstein came up with are not something that could have been learnt from observations of the world around us. ["like deducing Earth's gravity from an apple that fell on one's head"]. In that respect Einstein's contributions are really important; It's not often that one comes up with a grand theory about how the universe works by pure imagination and the universe obeys the theory. Also, AFAIK, Newton is at least as popular as Einstein with the masses.

quantumhobbit 18y ago
I agree that Einstein is better, because we can point to other geniuses of Newton's time who would have replicated his results. Leibniz for Calculus and Lorentz or Hamilton for mechanics. I'm not aware of anyone who could have come up with Einstein's Relativity or his explanation of the photo-electric effect in the early 1900's. Most of the experiments he used were decades old and no one else could piece them together.
- nebula 18y ago
  Though I don't know of any names, I think Einstein's explanation of photo-electric effect is not completely out of this world or without precedents. Quantization was known though it was not applied to light earlier; Light's particle nature was considered earlier, though the double slit experiment convinced everyone that it's a wave. If I remember correctly Newton was of the opinion that light is particle in nature. Though it might have been hard to make the jump, I would assume that some smart guy would have been able to put these together and explain photo-electric effect, if Einstein hadn't. In a sense this achievement is more or less on the expected lines of progress for science. However Relativity is a huge leap in my opinion.

by nebula 18y ago

quantumhobbit 18y ago

I agree that Einstein is better, because we can point to other geniuses of Newton's time who would have replicated his results. Leibniz for Calculus and Lorentz or Hamilton for mechanics. I'm not aware of anyone who could have come up with Einstein's Relativity or his explanation of the photo-electric effect in the early 1900's. Most of the experiments he used were decades old and no one else could piece them together.

nebula 18y ago
Though I don't know of any names, I think Einstein's explanation of photo-electric effect is not completely out of this world or without precedents. Quantization was known though it was not applied to light earlier; Light's particle nature was considered earlier, though the double slit experiment convinced everyone that it's a wave. If I remember correctly Newton was of the opinion that light is particle in nature. Though it might have been hard to make the jump, I would assume that some smart guy would have been able to put these together and explain photo-electric effect, if Einstein hadn't. In a sense this achievement is more or less on the expected lines of progress for science. However Relativity is a huge leap in my opinion.