Who made the greatest contribution to Science?
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This list has some of the best contenders, I'd say:
http://blog.acton.org/uploads/TeslaPrestige.jpg
http://blog.acton.org/uploads/TeslaPrestige.jpg
Gonna go with Richard James, the inventor of the motherfucking Slinky. Shit doesn't get more awesome and 'sciency' than that. 
Dude who made electricity usable, without him science would never have progressed to the point it has. And I wouldn't of been able to post this.
That would be the Babylonians, who came up with the concept for 0 as a placeholder but not an actual number. 0 didn't become a number until 9th century CE, much later than the original Babylonian "placeholder 0". The concept of 0 as a number can be attributed to the Indian scholar Pingala.octafish said:
OT: If you really want to go far back, I'd say the first human to domesticate dogs. Without dogs we wouldn't be able to herd or defend our flocks/herds effectively, which would severely stunt our latter developments in modern farming techniques and therefore stunt our development as a species.
Now, now, let's not use such preconception loaded terms, we should refer to them as our neo/paleolithic hunter gatherer cousinsdrdamo said:
(assuming that's when non-verbal comms were started, I don't know much about it)
I agree with your reasoning, and also suggest Newton on the same principle. He, in a sense, created the study of physics in the modern sense, and also created calculus. Math is absolutely fundamental to science.Jake Martinez said:
EDIT: Also, Ada Lovelace. First computer programmer.
Yeah, I was going to say this. There was no modesty, Newton was still being a dick. At best he was conceding that Hooke did a lot of good work which helped his own in some way. But seeing as Hooke was all for the wave interpretation of light whereas Newton was corpuscular, it's most likely Newton just calling Hooke a shortarse, while making it look like he's apologising (the Royal Society wanted peace between the two as Newton was a little ***** who wouldn't work properly otherwise. In fact the way Newton dealt with Hooke and his opposing theories in the end was to wait for Hooke to die. Yeah.).hopeneverdies said:
OT: I'll always have a spot for James Clarke Maxwell and Einstein. Much as people are fed up with giving Einstein credit and accolades, it's undeniable that the ************ deserves them. Relativity alone was an incredible idea which he made into an ironclad concept (although the concept was first approached by Lorentz and someone else I believe, they didn't take it far enough or understand what they were working on well enough to get all the nuances that Einstein did).
Maxwell is the guy behind almost all Electromagnetism. He was a brilliant theoretician and experimentalist. He was able to take the work of others (such as Faraday), improve upon it in a myriad of ways and then combine it with his own ideas to come up with Maxwell's Equations. 4 equations that can completely solve any electromagnetic problem (barring a few quantum mechanical based ones).
It is also these equations which provided the basis for the theory of relativity. They contain 'c' (the velocity of light) in such a way that there is an implication that it is the same in ANY reference frame. This went against the only other fully believed theory around - Newtons mechanics. While many thought there was an error in the Maxwell equations, Einstein and various others decided to examine the sacrosanct work of Newton instead (which always pissed off other physicists as a general rule was "You do not fuck with Newton's work"). Newtonian mechanics said that if you were travelling towards a light source the speed of light should be less, and it should be more if you're travelling away from the source. Starting from first principles, Einstein came up with his theories, seperately deriving the Lorentz transformations and showing how the velocity of light is always the same in every reference frame, owing to the contraction of length and dilation of time. The special theory of relativity came first, which did not consider acceleration at all. Then came the general theory, which is one of the hardest things I have ever studied (it's a masters level physics course in most places), and included acceleration into the model. To this day, it's untouchable. But without Maxwell, may never have existed. And we certainly wouldn't have our knowledge of electricity and magnetism without him.
These are my 2 choices. It can be argued that without people before them, such as Galileo, their work would never have existed. But that cannot be proven. In fact there have often been people working on the same ideas who have never heard of each other - consider Newton and Leibniz. There are also many who will never get mentioned in things like this but are more responsible than any other, perhaps better, scientists for setting in place the schooling and university systems that we have. Or creating bodies such as the Royal Society's.
Want to know more? Check this book out - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-His...7413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289911259&sr=8-1
There were qute a few "Heros of Science" back in those days, from Schrodinger, Dirac, Fermi, Feynman (He did alot of his work on QED in strip clubs), and Hiesenburg.Casimir_Effect said:
They are still working mainly today to prove (or disprove) many of these guys' claims. Unfortunately, modern science is based around probablility, something Einstein and Schrodinger were vehemently against.
And now I share something UTTERLY MAGNIFICENT!!!!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100909004112.htm
This overturns much of everything...along with a fourth flavor of neutrino, and the absence of gravity waves, the standard model is shown to be completely nondescript.
Truly beuatiful, when modern science tells us they have everything figured out, the universe paints a giant "LOL" in the sky.
But that all aside, quantum physics doesn't affect the "common man" and goes unnoticed, however Nicola Tesla's contributions are sooooo everyday and everywhere it is unimaginable he goes unknown. The man has built things that are ahead even by todays standards, some of it dissagreeing with "modern" physics - like his "earthquake machine"
Isaac Newton. He invented an entire mathematical system (calculus) and an entire scientific study (physics).