Who Are the Best Inventors, Engineers, and Scientists of the 21st Century?

Definitions: "Inventor": so artful and creative that he or she "created a new Universe".

"Engineer": Followed many principles and manufactured but less creative than inventor.

"Scientist": created principles that humanly cannot be disproved.

Please answer by any century of history or group of centuries of history. A start are the relatively obvious: Archimeded, Galileo, Newton, (Leibniz!!!, one of my favorites), Edison...

I thought you wqanted scientists of the 21st century? did i misunderstand you?

Any century would be great with emphasis on the 21st century.

There hasnt been much of a 21st century to declare a greatest scientist of this century so lets go back to the 20th for a minute.

I would say:

Albert Einstein - physics
Leo szillard - physics
Robert oppenheimer - physics
Robert godard - rocketry
hans beta(misspelled) - physics
Edward teller - physics
There are far more in this century but some others id like to also note:
archimedes
Copernicus
Galileo
Faraday
Max planck - 20th century
I know there are far more

there is only one man for me that answers all of the above and that is nikola tesla

is it George Westinghouse..who made the promotion of AC current verses Edisons DC current inventions??

I would put George Westinghouse up there too..
Agree with the previous poster about Nicola Tesla.

Thanks,
Orangetom

yes thats right George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to Tesla's polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between Edison's direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won out. other tesla patants that are of interest to me are worldwide communication, free energy and the death ray.

www.pbs.org...

Yeah, ask us again in 2101.

has to be Tesla without a doubt the man was a genius

multinational corporations are the best inventor/engineer/scientist, now.
the wild-haired, eccentric of yesteryear is obsolete in the world of mega-corporations.
anyone who DOES come up with an invention that threatens the corporate status quo, gets crushed like a tiny bug.
what was that movie???? 'tucker'? about the automobile guy? that was WAY back in the fifties.
only corporations are 'allowed' to invent anything signifigant, these days. if tesla were alive today, he would be working for honda trying to increase production or streamline a process or something equally BORING.
he was actually one of the last of the great inventors, and one of the first crushed by a corporation, a slimy, evil project of thomas edison(the thieving arsehole).
take your heads out of your schoolbooks and read between the lines for a change.

who invented the internet? the home computer? the GPS trackable, implantable human chip? who invented the carburator that can get 70 mi. per gallon in a seventy-one buick? the LCD screen? free electricity?
it's nice to dream about the great minds of the past. those days are gone. if 'they' don't own it, 'you' are not allowed to share it or develop an industry around it. this takes nearly all the motivation out of being an inventor in the first place.

all that said, the george forman grill is pretty good, i hear.

I am often given to wondering how many inventions by individuals have been kept off the market by these multinational corporation because they were a threat to existing industrys. I have a copy of Browns book of Cauberators. It is full of patents in the US patent office for high milage or alternative fuel combinations. Also a olde book titled "supressed inventions and how they work". These two books made for very intresting reading.

Not just in fuel systems but other areas like electrical energy, Gyroscopic energy, Hydraulics etc etc etc.

I agree the multinationals are the source of much of inventiveness today.
Great post Billybob.

Thanks,
Orangetom

I like Feynman (who was SO strange!) and Sagan and Asimov and Franz Boas and Claude Levy-Strauss and Bardeen, Brattain & Shockley (co-inventors of the transistor) and Salk (polio vaccine) and Schweitzer and the Leakeys and Jung and Freud and Barnard (heart transplants) and Ford and Edison.

BUT.... we won't actually be able to evaluate this for another 200 years. We can look back to the 1800's and see the inventions that changed the world. But right now, we're too close to get real perspective on the impact (as others have said.)

J. Salk hands down

For Heart transplants though with all due respect to Byrd I would have to go with Dr. Norman Schumway of Stanford who actually got it to work as a repeatable surgical technique (Nice guy BTW)

Albert Einstein
Galileo
Nikola Tesla
Thomas Edison
Isaac Newton
Carl Sagan
Marie Curie

Another I think worth mentioning that may not be well known
John Hutchison of Canada

[edit on 17-9-2005 by Eden]

Yes! There is another Feynman lover out there!

Feynman Diagrams? Genius!

reply to post by orangetom1999


hey. just saw this.
thanks fer yer kind words.

reply to post by superprivy


Who Are the Best Inventors, Engineers, and Scientists of the 21st Century?

Well I agree not much so far for the 21st
But for the 20th had to be Ronco They came out with some of the coolest inventions ever like this classic!

Here is my list:
Einstein
Nikola Tesla
Thomas Edison