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By Ashley Cox | October 4th 2008 12:20 PM | 21 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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About Ashley Cox

I'm an undergrad in chemistry on my way to getting a PhD before any of you did. Just kidding.

I have many different interests including genetics, fire fighting, rock climbing, marine


... Full Bio

In the day to day hustle of our busy lives full of research, formulae, vats of coffee, etc. we often forget to think about those who walked this road before us and created many of the techniques we use. Without their contributions, it's difficult to imagine where we would be. With that said, here's my way of giving thanks and showing appreciation to all those who came before us in the field of science and to help inspire other people out there trying to do great things now; famous words from famous scientists.  *****

1. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist, often considered the definition of genius. Most praised for his Theory of Relativity and mass-energy equivalence (E= MC2) along with countless other additions in the field of physics. Received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work in theoretical physics.

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."


Albert Einstein 2. Charles Darwin (1809- 1882) Propose the Theory of Evolution through the process of Natural Selection, providing the first accepted and unifying logical explanation for the diversity of life. 
"A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. "

 

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

 
Charles Darwin
 

3. Isaac Newton (1642-1727)


Mathematician, physicist and apple lover who proposed the law of universal gravitation as well as the three laws of motion: Inertia, Force= mass x acceleration and action/reaction.


"To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction."


"I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." 


"We build too many walls and not enough bridges."


Sir Isaac Newton

4. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Psychiatrist, best known for his theories of the unconscious mind, the defense mechanism for repression and sexual desire. Created the clinical practice of psychoanalysis, using communication to cure psychopathology. He is also known for his interpretation of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires.


"A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence."

 

"Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy."

 

"The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious."

 

freud


5. Thomas Edison (1847-1931) Inventor who popularized, among other things, the light bulb and the phonograph. He helped optimize mass production and helped America become an industrial powerhouse.


"Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. "


"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."


"I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists - proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision."

 

"Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have."

 

 Edison

 

6. Aristotle (384-233 BCE) Greek philosopher and student of Plato who became educated in physics, metaphysics, poetry, logic, music, politics, ethics, and biology. He was one of the founders of Western Philosophy which connected morality and aesthetics, logic and science, and politics and metaphysics.

"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence"


"All human actions have one or more of these seven cause: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire."


 


7. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) Scientist, mathematician, inventor, engineer, architect, anatomist, musician, painter, sculptor and writer.  It doesn't sound so spectacular written that way but there is no way to be spectacular enough about Da Vinci so that's the best I can do.


"Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness."


"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions." 


da vinci
 

 8. William Herschel (1738-1822) Astronomer, discovered Uranus, nebulae and binary stars. He was the first to accurately describe the Milky Way Galaxy as well as the first to discover inferred radiation within space.


"All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more the truths contained in the sacred scriptures."


"If I were to pray for a taste which would stand by me under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading."


 


9. Archimedes (287- 212 BCE) Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer responsible for contributions in hydrostatics as well as the foundation for calculus. If you've ever had what you called a "Eureka!" moment, he's the scientist who made it famous and he proved sometimes you can do your best science in a bathtub.


"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”  Archimedes

10. James Prescott Joule (1818-1889) Played a fundamental role in the field of physics with his first law of thermodynamics, which Isaac Asimov called "one of the most important generalizations in the history of science." With Lord Kelvin, discovered that gases cool when they expand.

"Believing that the power to destroy belongs to the Creator alone I affirm... that any theory which, when carried out, demands the annihilation of force, is necessarily erroneous."


  Joule ***** So there, my tribute to some of those who shaped our world of science and our understanding of reality. Since their science will never be forgotten, so should their words of advice be remembered. There's no guarantee that remembering how they understood life will make us as great as they are, but it can't hurt either.

Comments

Charles Darwin should be removed. That dope got nothing right. Natural selection does not create fitness -- internal processes that respond to environmental changes do.
rholley's picture
Isn't this Lamarckism? ......... Or even Lysenkoism?

Robert H. Olley
Physics Department
University of Reading
England

Steve Davis's picture
That's a good list Ashley, and it's nice to see that these great ones from the past were not afraid to venture into philosophy.
Damn good list ash!
Im very proud of you! =]

rholley's picture
Wot!? No chemists? ...................

Have a read of Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry from Ancient Alchemy to Nuclear Fission Dover, ISBN 0486233421

Robert H. Olley
Physics Department
University of Reading
England

Kimberly Crandell's picture
Great list! You've got to love Da Vinci - was there anything he couldn't do?

Edison should be removed. He wasn't a scientist and didn't invent most of the things credited to him.

I would add James Clark Maxwell, Lise Meitner, Paul Ehrlich
( the medical researcher), Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Gauss, Ludwich
Boltzman, Dalton, the physicist ( Edwin Armstrong), Lord Rayleigh, Poincare, Alfred Russel Wallace, Lord Kelvin, Michael Faraday.

These were all heroes of my girlhood.

I would remove Aristotle--not much of a scientist.
Similarly for Da Vinci--not much of scientist, though he did do dissections.
I would add Galileo!

Hank's picture
Similarly for Da Vinci--not much of scientist

There are places you can be shot for saying such things.

ashley's picture
I would remove Aristotle--not much of a scientist.

I happen to really really like him...
:)

Stellare's picture
Both Aristotle and Da Vinci were more of scientists than several of todays scientists....so shoot me!! :-)

Bente Lilja Bye is the author of Lilja - A bouquet of stories about the Earth

Good list, Penny.

....................... (Actually I am verifiable, but I'm beamlining at the moment and I don't like to log in on public computers.)

Robert H. Olley
Physics Department
University of Reading
England

Back to Ashley's list this time, I think the trouble with some of these philosphers is that their followers take them too seriously. Much of Aristotle is still great, but some of his ideas were superseded in time.

A similar case is Kant. The progress of non-Euclidean geometry was held up for decades because Kant's followers insisted, according to their reading of Kant, that Euclidean geometry was the only possible one.

Some philosophers, though, do come out with genuinely productive ideas. My two front runners are Johann Friedrich Herbart, Kant's succesor at Königsberg, whose ideas inspired Bernhard Riemann (whose work forms the basis of Einstein's general relativity) and Roger Joseph Boscovich, whose work inspired Michael Faraday to develop field theory for electromagnetic interaction.

ashley's picture
I think the trouble with some of these philosphers is that their followers take them too seriously. Much of Aristotle is still great, but some of his ideas were superseded in time.

Thats what I mean, they had (at one time) been very popular with their philosophies or techniques, enough so that they are still being branched off of today. Each and every one of those listed, I felt, had contributed in one way or another, and that's what matters.

Hi Robert,
First of all Boscovich was a PROFESSOR of mathematics--and a very serious professional astronomer. He also is listed as a
philosopher--but like Pascal, the most important thing is that he was a MATHEMATICIAN.

Riemann was a student of Gauss--who invented differential geometry---and Riemannian Geomety was his Phd thesis. It is
very unlikely that his mathematicial thesis ( which I have read--you may find a translation in Spivak's book on Differential Geometry) has any input from Herbart.

There are some philosophical speculations of Riemann at the end about possible applications to psychology and aesthetics
( which went nowhere), that may have been influenced by
Herbart.

Except when the "philosopher" is also a mathematician or scientist-- I hold with Richard Feynman that Philosophers are ( from a science perspective) basically Flim-flam artists.

It wasn't Kant whose disciples were against Non-Euclidean
geometry, but Hegel---who also published the philosphical
impossibility of more than seven solar planets ( sadly--just after the eighth had been discovered!).

That said--both Darwin and Wallace quoted the same line of Malthus as part inspiration for the brilliant idea of survival of the fitter as part of the mechanism of evolution.

Dear Robert,
It was Hegel's flim flam that inspired Kant to call his own
Magnum Opus: " A Critique of Pure Reason".

Dear Ashley,
In "On Nature" by Lucretius, he explains that Empedocles
( whose works do not survive) had given a method for finding the size of an atom ( actually a molecule). He explains
that a known volume of a certain oil will spread out to a disc on the surface of water--but that the disc is really a cylinder one atom high--so by elementary geometry he can calculate the length of an atom. E., also explains that the dancing dust motes in a sunbeam are due to the random motions of colliding atoms--today we call this Brownian Motion.

Eratosthenes showed using similar triangles and a simple solar observation that the earth had a computable circumference.

TO me, this far outshines Aristotle--who made no Correct and original contribution of any importance to science.

But, of course, you can like him Ashley--just understand that he was no scientist.

I like Socrates--but he was no scientist. But, IMHO utterly
brilliant.

I forgot to say that Ashley's is a great post!! Heroes are very important.

By the way, Riemann is another Hero--he did so much--in so many fields of math--although he died young. He also fought poverty and TB.

Robert, I was very fortunate in my list to have grown up in a time when it was in vogue to stress the lives of scientific heroes--partly inspired by the classic "Microbe Hunters"--which was a science version of Plutarch's Parallel
Lives". My list wasn't chosen by me--it was absorbed by Osmosis.

That is now all out of favor--and I think we are reaping the
consequences.

Of course, I am anonymous who posted about Hegel etc.
Computer glitch.

Why has this thread died. Ashley has made a very point that heroes are VERY important, and I was hoping others would follow my lead and post their heroes, as well as the effect if has had on them.

rholley's picture
Back from the beamlines (so I'm no longer not verified) I was thinking much the same thing as Penny. We haven't even exhausted Ashley's hero list yet. How about this link:

Albert Einstein's letters on how to deal with the USSR up for auction


Read the link and you will also see he dismissed the notion that his theories were difficult to understand as "twaddle".

Robert H. Olley
Physics Department
University of Reading
England

Ashley Cox my apologies for posting to your article so late.

I would have added Johanes Kepler and possibly Nikola Tesla to your list

I doubt that I would have included Aristotle. I may be wrong, but I think he and his following colleagues retarded the development of the sciences with their philosophies. Still, you have an impressive list that would be hard for many of us to live up to.

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