• Question: Who do you think is the best scientist ever

    Asked by anon-252758 to Patricia on 4 May 2020.
    • Photo: Patricia Brown

      Patricia Brown answered on 4 May 2020:

      I don’t think any one scientist deserves that title. I think there are many great scientists around the world! What they have in common is that they are curious, open-minded and they work very hard to discover new things and to share their findings with everyone. During the course of my scientific journey, I have met so many great scientists that it’s impossible to make up my mind!

Comments

  • Photo: Keith

    Keith commented on :

    I think that I agree with Patricia. It is very difficult to comare the importance of say Charles Darwin against Isaac Newton or Galileo Galilei. Each of them has made hugely important contributions to science and each scientist relies on discoveries made by others. Many important scientists have been forgotten. I think that a lot of very important science was done or discovered outside of Europe – in particular in physics and chemistry in China – long before it was rediscovered in Europe. This is similar for discoveries made in medicine in the Middle East during the Ottoman Empire. But my personal favourite is Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution – as Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’.

  • Photo: Shaline

    Shaline commented on :

    Hi @dantecousin2008. I think it would be unfair to solely pick out one scientist at the greatest one because without each and every one of them we wouldn’t have made as many advances nor breakthroughs as we have. As scientists we build on prior knowledge from others and we have to be ready to seize the opportunities that come our way. With this in mind, from a personal point of view, there are two scientists who I think are great based on not only what they achieved but also from the messages I take from them. They are Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur, who with their respective sayings: “if I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” (Newton) and “chance favours only the prepared mind” (Pasteur) have inspired me to approach my research in a certain way.