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Happy Birthday to the smartest man who ever lived


TheMadCap

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What about Leonardo?

 

He's number 2. :)

 

This is fun. We should make a list. I call mine, "top 12 smartest men of science"

  1. Nikola Tesla
     
  2. Leonardo de Vinci
     
  3. Sir Issac Newton
     
  4. Galileo Galilei
     
  5. Johannas Kepler
     
  6. Albert Einstein
     
  7. Archimedes
     
  8. Oppenhiemer/Feynmen/Fermi
     
  9. Aristarchus of Samos
     
  10. Heron of Alexandria
     
  11. Ben Franklin
     
  12. Louis Pasteur

 

Ok, I cheated and put three guys together, so what? They were essential for that project. Interested to see yours!

Edited by TheMadCap
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5 years ago we named our new kitten: Tesla. My son @ the time was doing his living museum project on him, we even built a mini Tesla coil that wirelessly powers a small Fl bulb... The irony (situational) does not escape us that he is the dumbest cat on the planet! There goes the potential that he was gonna be somekind of "wonder cat." The good thing, being dumber than a box of hammers... He is mellow and causes no problems, like the other two cats (2011) do... BUT, he does get bullied! Oh, well... :doh:

Edited by ExiledInIllinois
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I don't think DiCaprio can do much more than act. :)

 

He did a lot of different things in that movie "Catch me if you Can."

 

Quite the runessaince man.

 

I am uncertain about Heisenberg

 

Horrible what happened to his blimp.

 

I'd feel much better about him being on the list had that tragedy not occurred.

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He's number 2. :)

 

This is fun. We should make a list. I call mine, "top 12 smartest men of science"

  1. Nikola Tesla
     
  2. Leonardo de Vinci
     
  3. Sir Issac Newton
     
  4. Galileo Galilei
     
  5. Johannas Kepler
     
  6. Albert Einstein
     
  7. Archimedes
     
  8. Oppenhiemer/Feynmen/Fermi
     
  9. Aristarchus of Samos
     
  10. Heron of Alexandria
     
  11. Ben Franklin
     
  12. Louis Pasteur

Ok, I cheated and put three guys together, so what? They were essential for that project. Interested to see yours!

 

Oppenheimer, by all accounts, was something of a dolt (as physicists go). Great administrator, which is why he ran the Manhattan Project. But apparently he had a reputation for routinely !@#$ing up simple calculations (minus signs and factors of pi or c were known as "Oppenheimer factors," as he so often lost track of them). I think that precludes him from any such list.

 

Also, Feynman should be above Einstein. By a significant margin. Feynman's contributions to physics and other sciences were much broader than Einstein's.

 

And James Clerk Maxwell deserves to be on that list. Probably in the Kepler-Archimedes range.

Edited by DC Tom
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Oppenheimer, by all accounts, was something of a dolt (as physicists go). Great administrator, which is why he ran the Manhattan Project. But apparently he had a reputation for routinely !@#$ing up simple calculations (minus signs and factors of pi or c were known as "Oppenheimer factors," as he so often lost track of them). I think that precludes him from any such list.

 

Also, Feynman should be above Einstein. By a significant margin. Feynman's contributions to physics and other sciences were much broader than Einstein's.

 

And James Clerk Maxwell deserves to be on that list. Probably in the Kepler-Archimedes range.

 

I admit I likely submitted to peer pressure on the Einstein ranking. Let's just say Tesla thought he was a hack so that alone makes him suspect. (kidding, Tesla didn't like a lot of people apparently).

 

I'd be interested in a book recommendation about Oppenheimer that isn't written by commies ("American Prometheus") if you have one for me.

 

You should submit your list Tom, would be interesting. Maybe the big kids can have an actual discussion before the adolescents poop all over our thread...

Edited by TheMadCap
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(kidding, Tesla didn't like a lot of people apparently).

 

 

Yeah, Tesla in not liking a lot of people... Sure made it easy on them. Like not defending his patents. It is very much argued that Tesla invented the radio. I mean, how many of Telsa's patents did Marconi use for free? Doesn't his "love" for the people show up in many other ways. IMO, he probably didn't like too many people that he considered business parasites. You gotta remember the times ... Big trusts, monopolies...

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Yeah, Tesla in not liking a lot of people... Sure made it easy on them. Like not defending his patents. It is very much argued that Tesla invented the radio. I mean, how many of Telsa's patents did Marconi use for free? Doesn't his "love" for the people show up in many other ways. IMO, he probably didn't like too many people that he considered business parasites. You gotta remember the times ... Big trusts, monopolies...

 

I believe his actual quote was, "Marconi is a good man, he's using 22 of my patents"...

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I'd be interested in a book recommendation about Oppenheimer that isn't written by commies ("American Prometheus") if you have one for me.

 

I don't have any biographies on Oppenheimer...but read a few of the other Los Alamos scientists ("Genius" by Gleick, about Feynmann, mentions Oppenheimer a bit, and is a very good book besides) and they usually amount to the same thing: Oppenheimer was a very good man, very good organizer, mediocre-at-best physicist.

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