Do You Know These Scientific Pioneers?
It’s easy to name science and math geniuses. I can just flip open my old book from the 1960s, which lists “100 Great Scientists”; it contains all the names you’d find on most popular lists of scientific geniuses: Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Gauss, Bohr, Archimedes, Darwin, Galileo, and 92 others.
But the geniuses of popular notoriety aren’t the only great minds of scientific history. That book and other such lists overlook many deserving names—the unsung geniuses overshadowed by more publicity-savvy rivals or under-appreciated because of when and where they lived. Presented below are my Top 10 of those insufficiently recognized scientific geniuses of all time, listed in chronological order.
Keep in mind that this is science and math only, so no Shakespeare, no Bobby Fischer, no Lennon and McCartney. Also, nobody still living is eligible—wouldn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.
And remember, for list-making purposes, genius shouldn’t simply be thought of as high IQ. It’s more a combination of intellectual capacity and what was achieved with it. Geniuses transcend the time in which they live, contributing insights that allow future scientists to be smarter than the geniuses of the past. All the people listed here did that.
Brahmagupta (India, 598-c.670)
A prominent astronomer, Brahmagupta wrote an extensive treatise covering such topics as the motions of the planets, eclipses, and the phases of the moon. But his genius emerged most prominently in mathematics. He introduced the idea of zero as a number like any other and discussed how to calculate with it. He was also the first to explain negative numbers, a concept thought by the Greeks to be “absurd.” Brahmagupta pointed out that multiplying two negative numbers (he called them “debts”) produced a positive number (in his terminology, a “fortune”).
Robert Grosseteste (England, c. 1170-1253)
Grosseteste was a prominent churchman who served as the Bishop of Lincoln for the last 18 years of his life. But in his earlier days he was a master of all the sciences, from medicine to cosmology. In fact, he was among the first modern scientific thinkers of the Middle Ages. He respected Aristotle but taught that experiment took precedence over authority. Grosseteste was an expert in optics, considering light to be the fundamental substance of existence; its power gave the cosmos shape, pushing matter around to form the heavenly spheres. Roger Bacon, the more widely known scientific pioneer of the 13th century, held Grosseteste in the highest esteem, while dismissing most other big scientific names of the day as dimwits.
Nicole Oresme (France, c. 1320-1382)
One of the most sophisticated mathematicians of his era, Oresme worked out the logical demonstration that all observable evidence was consistent with the Earth’s rotating on its axis, rather than the sun actually rising and setting. His true genius, however, was in then stating that he didn’t really believe that the Earth rotated, so that he could keep in good standing with the church (he was a bishop) and not get put under house arrest or burned at the stake.
Thomas Harriot (England, c. 1560-1621)
Harriot was a master of many sciences, starting with his role as scientist for an expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585. Later in his life he became the preeminent mathematician in England, a pioneer in the establishment of algebra for both pure and applied math. As an astronomer, he observed features on the moon and spotted the moons of Jupiter, possibly even before Galileo. His works on optics included an analysis of the physics of rainbows. Most of his writings went unpublished in his lifetime; hence many later mathematicians rediscovered much that Harriot had already accomplished or foreseen.
Antoine Parent (France, 1666-1716)
Parent applied his versatile intellect to a vast scope of scientific fields. He investigated physics and astronomy, cartography and geometry, chemistry and biology, and even music. He was most astute in analyzing practical matters such as friction’s effect on motion and stresses on structural beams, and attempted to compute the theoretical maximum efficiency of machines. For his exemplar he chose water wheels, widely used to harness the power of flowing streams for such tasks as sawing wood or milling grain. Parent got the wrong answer, but nevertheless laid the groundwork for the second law of thermodynamics. Parent’s harsh criticism of Descartes’ science earned him no friends among his French colleagues, though, who considered Parent to be tactless and aggressive. After he died of smallpox, one obituary writer commented that Parent “had goodness without showing it.”
Mary Somerville (Scotland, 1780-1872)
She was the Carl Sagan of the 19th century, one of the most respected and prolific popularizers of science of her age. Her one year of formal schooling (at age 10) triggered enough curiosity that she taught herself algebra and geometry (mostly in secret, as her father disapproved). She married and moved to London, but her husband died young, so she returned to Scotland and to science. When asked to translate Laplace’s works on celestial mechanics into English, she turned the translation into a popular explanation, launching a career of writing books that conveyed the cutting edge of 19th-century science to the wider literate public. Her work, universally praised by the scientific community, combined the genius of insight with the ability to convey it.
Adolphe Quetelet (Belgium, 1796-1874)
As a youth, Quetelet dabbled in writing operas and poetry, but wisely switched to math, before becoming an astronomer and ultimately the most accomplished statistician of his day. Quetelet especially perceived the importance of statistical reasoning for the social sciences. He demonstrated how the prevalence of various crimes could be predicted, for instance. He also recognized the fallacies that improper statistical reasoning could propagate, noting that the numbers said nothing about any individual, but that nonetheless the statistical construction of an “average man” could reveal much about society as a whole. Also, to the benefit (or annoyance) of many dieters, he developed the formula for Body Mass Index, so that you can properly quantify how overweight you are.
William Kingdon Clifford (England, 1845-1879)
A brilliant mathematician, Clifford was in ill health for most of his adult life and died at 33. Even so he earned international repute for his original approaches to geometry and other aspects of mathematics. His work foreshadowed aspects of Einstein’s general theory of relativity; Clifford pointed out that “some or all of those causes which we term physical may… be due to the geometrical construction of our space,” anticipating Einstein’s description of gravity as curvature in the geometry of spacetime, the combination of space and time implied by his special theory of relativity.
Emile Borel (France, 1871-1956)
By age 11, Borel’s genius was apparent enough that he left home to receive more advanced instruction and eventually made his way to Paris, where he observed that the most exciting and fulfilling lives were led by mathematicians. He became an enormously productive scholar, with major contributions to set theory (the branch of math that studies the properties of collections of objects) and probability theory. And in the 1920s he established many of the fundamental principles of game theory (the math for calculating optimum strategies)—unknown to John von Neumann, who invented them all over again.
Amalie Emmy Noether (Germany, 1882-1935)
In the mid-19th century, several men figured out the law of conservation of energy, but it was Emmy Noether who figured out why energy is conserved. It’s a consequence of a symmetry in nature, specifically the symmetry of time—physical law remaining the same in the future as it has been in the past. What’s more, she showed that other symmetries also require conservation laws—symmetry in spatial direction guarantees conservation of angular momentum, for example. Noether contributed to many other realms of math, especially abstract algebra, and clarified some of the mathematical aspects of general relativity. Despite years of discrimination, she was eventually allowed to join the faculty at Göttingen, after the esteemed mathematician David Hilbert pointed out that the faculty senate was not a bathhouse.
Tom Siegfried is a freelance writer in northern Virginia and former editor in chief of Science News. This article first appeared online in our “Genius” issue in October, 2014.
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Joseph Olson
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Antonio Muecci telephone patents stolen by frontman Alex Bell to create Rockefeller AT&T monopoly.
Nicola Tesla radio patents stolen by frontman Marconi to create Rockefeller RCA monopoly
Wright Brothers flight patents stolen by frontmen Alex Bell, Samuel Langley and Glenn Curtis to allow Rockefeller & Rothschild front companies to exploit new aviation market.
Philo Farnsworth television patents stolen by David Sarnoff to create Rockefeller CBS monopoly.
We are bounded by faux science, fake history, filtered news, financed by fiat currency and directed by demonic warlords. Free humanity from these feudalists.
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John Vrabec
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From The Guardian – “Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his “talking telegraph” so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew it.
He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union.”
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Tom,
You wrote: “I can just flip open my old book from the 1960s, which lists “100 Great Scientists”;” A little bit later you wrote: “Presented below are my Top 10 of those insufficiently recognized scientific geniuses of all time, listed in chronological order.”
The 1960 list to which you referred did not identify the 100 people as being geniuses; only you have. They were merely ‘Great Scientists’. The implication of your article is that to be a Great Scientist one needs to be a “genius. What is not a ‘truth’.
For I read that Einstein, himself, stated: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
A ‘Great Scientist’ is a ‘Great Observer’. And Einstein stated: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
While Einstein was not an experimentalist who observed, he knew the test of his ideas was experimentation observation. For he also stated: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” If Einstein might be called a genius, it his realization of this scientific fact which makes him one.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I am slow and stupid. I should have known that Tom was very unlikely to respond to my comment about what he had written three years earlier.
Tom stated in listed his ten unfamiliar geniuses in listed in ‘chronological order’. I write this comment to question: Why didn’t he list the eight “Great Scientists’ in chronological order?
Of course I cannot know Tom’s answer to this question. I can only order the first three in chronological order Archimedes (289-212 B.C.), Galileo (1564-1642 A.D.), Newton (1642-1727) and ask: Why the big gap between Archimedes and Galileo? Were no ‘geniuses’ born between 212bc and 1564ad)?
Because I am a chemist I ask: Why did not John Dalton, a school teacher who on the basis of the results of other alchemists’ experimental results, which had established the existence of two Scientific Laws make Tom’s list of eight ‘Great Scientists”? Was it because these alchemist experimenters were to known to not be mathematical geniuses?
Some questions for a reader to ponder.
Have good day, Jerry
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jerry,
You need to either choose if Einstein was a genus and can be cited as an authority or stop using the quote that one experiment can prove him wrong.
There have been several experiments that have shown him to be wrong, but because of the belief in his genius they are ignored.
The thought experiment where a beam of light reflected between two walls would descend in an accelerating room but remain at the same height in a gravitational field shows that there is a way to distinguish between acceleration and gravity and that his equivalence hypothesis is wrong. Since this ia a thought experiment that cannot be performed believers choose to believe Einstein and ignore the thought experiment (can an all powerful God create a rock so big he can’t lift it.).
When the energy emitted by radioactive decay did not agree with Einstein’s E=mc^2 an imaginary particle, the neutrino, was created to make Einstein correct despite the evidence from actual observation.
The data of the dilation from atomic clocks on satellites gives the opposite results that Einstein predicted. The further a satellite is from Earth (weaker gravitational field) and the slower its velocity the greater the dilation (slower the clock goes.). No imaginary particle can be created to fix these observable results and make Einstein’s theories right
If you choose to ignore observations that conflict with your beliefs, then you should only cite quotes that support your beliefs in the genius of their source.
Have a good day,
Herb
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
You began: “You need to either choose if Einstein was a genus and can be cited as an authority or stop using the quote that one experiment can prove him wrong.”
You seem to suffer under the illusion that you are an authority who has some control over what I might or might not do. Einstein never tried to be an authority. He did his thing and allowed every reader to make up his/her mind about what to believe. I do agree with you that all scientific ideas are beliefs because SCIENCE can never prove what is true. Only what is observed over and over is the truth which needs some sort of explanation (scientific idea) to explain the observed phenomena. But some phenomena like the observed actions of gravity and inertia have no explanation that I accept even if their are people like you who claim to speak the truth without any observed evidence to support your truths.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Wally
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Icon Einstein, fraud & plagiarist, “genius” not:
– Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist, by Bjerknes, Christopher Jon, Downers Grove, Ill.: XTX Inc., 2002.
– Albert Einstein: Time Magazine’s Undeserving Person of the Century, By John Wear:
https://codoh.com/library/document/6743/?lang=en
excerpt: “It appears that the physics community and the media invented a comic book figure, “Einstein”, with “E=mc²” stenciled across his chest. The media and educational institutions portray this surreal and farcical image as a benevolent god to watch over us…
– Exposing the Real Albert Einstein: https://principia-scientific.org/exposing-the-real-albert-einstein
– The Great Einstein Hoax: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Einstein-Hoax-Herb-Rose/dp/1478748095
– Albert Einstein was a Fraud: http://coconutrevival.com/?p=5656
– Einstein, plagiarist of the century: https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_einstein.htm
and: https://www.bitchute.com/video/efWhgxlziT40/
–
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Wally,
Thank you for referencing some of the writings which Herb eventually been reading without referencing his sources.
I had never read about Johann Georg von Soldner, astronomer, who in 1801 wrote a paper predicting that star light passing near our sen would be deflected by our sun. The unknown author of the wikipedia writer, who wrote about Johann and this idea, admitted that Einstein possibly never knew about Johann’s report of his scholarship 114 years earlier. I thought I had read that Newton had considered that light of corpuscular (independent particles of energy which we now term photons. But was too lazy to find reference of this. But as I read about these attempts to discredit Einstein’s scholarship I read what Newton had probably had written (possibly in Latin) as was the language the language that Newton wrote ‘The Principle’.
Today, as I read your comment and some of your references and learned about Johann and his early scholarship, I was led to another article which was published here at PSI. And I discribed how one could simply access this article to read it. Have you or Herb or any others who fault Einstein read this article? If you or Herb do I would like to have a conversation about what can be read.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Zoe Phin
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Zoe Phin (1985 – )
Discovered the Earth is not a dead rock and climate scientists should not treat it as such. The greenhouse effect is just geothermal flipped up-side down.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
Tom’s article is about the History of Science and this. is critically important topic. While doing some ‘literature search’ I discovered ‘How A Refrigerator Led To Einstein’s Pleas For Atomic Bomb Research’
Written by Erin Blakemore and Published on June 22, 2017 here at PSI.
I am not going to try to summarize this important (my opinion) historical scientific article. If you are interested, type refrigerator in the search box at the top of this page and hit enter or return. I tested this and it will get you quickly to this Erin’s article.
Have a good day, jerry
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Carbon Bigfoot
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Just watched an episode of “Ancient Aliens” a popular Discovery Channel offering. Interestingly a discussion ensued about Einstein’s genius. If you recall Al’s brain was preserved and slices of it were given to scientists/doctors to examine. Results suggest Al’s brain had a preponderance of Glia cells exceeding normal human numbers.
After that there was a documentary of the “Una-Bomber” Ted Kasinskiy whose IQ 167 got him admitted to Harvard as a teenager. AI Einstein’s IQ was reportedly only 160.
I guess TK’s IQ managed to allude the FBI for decades and it was only his ego (manifesto) and his brother who turned him in that solved that mystery.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Carbon,
Interesting commentary. Here is a question about the nonfiction. Was Einstein basically GOOD and TK basically EVIL? This battle, according to what I have read, has be going on since since there was HUMANS. And who can deny, based upon what we read here at PSI, that many comments concern this continuing battle?
Have a good day, Jerry
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