What's the the 4th grade level Who Did What? I don't know man, I think you need to calm down with the hero worshiping. I'm not seeing you bringing up any objective reasoning on what criteria should be used to judge "the smartest". We're not talking about accomplishments(which is also hard to judge) here, you're talking about actual intelligence. As for Newton, once again, WHY should the foundation setters be automatically labeled as the smartest?
I think it's been proven that the beginnings of calculus was a couple of hundred years before either Newton or Leibniz is given credit for "discovering" it. Ancient Greeks, Indians, etc. were discovering the principles of calculus long before Liebniz and Newton. I guess it depends on what you consider "discovering" means. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/calculus-was-developed-in-medieval-india
That was purely circumstantial, he had to have already witnessed fire through nature alone, lightnijg etc. On a side note something funny i heard was people are the only species to invent fire and burn evwrything they invented with fire. (implying the pyromaniac nature that causes humans to burn everything
I threw that out there more in response to the notion that Newton was way ahead of his peers than the calculus debate.
I see what youre trying to say but as ranking itself may be opinionated there are certain examples like newton, da vinci, tesla and others whos contributions relative to the time and knowlesge at the time are clear indications of not only an innovative side that was unparalleled but a firm belief in how correct they were despite every possible person on the planet mocking them they stood their ground. Ex: darwin's reception after publishing the origin of species, galileo and the church at the time, einstein being called mad man after presenting his thesis ,etc. The amount of knowlege left to be unearthed is never ending imo. While i did cite famous people i took into account how the individual came to such theories given The tech and knowledge at thw time. To this day people cant underatand how einstein arrived at the theory of relativity etc based on caclulations he conducted in his basement while working as a clerk, without a lab or connections to other scientists like it is today. The world's scientists today collabarate on a regular basis from accross the globe filling gaps for one another and presenting evidence that could solidify a belief and lead to something great.
I was not aware of the 2 wks bit but damn... Plank , gauss, maxwell are great additions i just thought id keep the physicists down even though their abstract way of perceiving the world probably givea them a step ahead of most.
Wow i was not aware of who he was. Very sad story on how he was treated and ended up , but pioneering computer programming/AI is incredible. I dont know too much about programming as i hated it, bailing after two wks but i have a great sense of respect for those that do. Alan Mathison Turing was born on June 23rd 1912 in Paddington, London. He was educated at Sherborne School, and then went to King's College, Cambridge in 1931 to read Mathematics. Alan Turing was a brilliant original thinker. Formally a mathematician, in his lifetime he studied and wrote papers over a whole spectrum of subjects, from philosophy and psychology through to physics, chemistry and biology. He was probably at his happiest when he could combine high-level thinking with hands-on experience with machinery or experiments. In addition to his many other interests, for most of his postgraduate life he probably had a deeper understanding of computers and their potential in the future than anyone else. For the full story of Turing's life, visit the Turing Web Site, from which much of this description is derived. The Turing Machine (1934-36) Turing graduated from Cambridge in Mathematics in 1934, and was a fellow at Kings for two years, during which he wrote his now famous paper published in 1937 "On Computable Numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem", which postulated the Turing Machine. The Entscheidungsproblem was the mathematical problem of Decidability. (He had been made aware of the problem from a lecture course by Max Newman, and it was to Newman he first showed the paper.) A Turing Machine was a specific mechanical device that could carry out some specific task in a systematic way. Each Turing Machine would work in a similar manner, using mechanisms related to the computer concepts of input, output and a program. The Universal Turing Machine was essentially a similar device, the specific task of which was to read in a description of any Turing machine in a standard format and then execute any task it was designed to undertake. The Universal Turing Machine would therefore carry out any systematic process man could devise. The Turing Machine was a somewhat obscure device; there was no intention of building one; it was essentially an abstract concept in a paper considering logic and philosophy. However, relative to the high levels of theory in which he was operating, it was a concrete, buildable machine. It had little similarity to the classic 'von Neumann computer' of 1945, and was not well understood. However the paper anticipated many computer-related concepts, like input, output, memory, coded programs, algorithms, compilers/interpreters, and the finite-state machine.[/B]
Unless every person in thread knows this info....i dont know i kind of seem obligated to provide reasoning for making the list as it is. And i already answered your question. The ability to construct or postulate theories on a degree of great complexity wgile taking into account how much of their own ability went into play. Not talking about the super computer sequencing the genome or how the chalk helped the person write, or the stool providing ass-rest. HOw many individuals today could sit in front of a chalkboard and propose theories such as those of relativity without a lab for greater confirmation or amything, just pure calculation and would still stand by it with the pinacle of confidence? If someone isnt fully sure of themselves i doubt you can say their reasoning stands to a concrete level. When someone acts In such a manner it speaks volumes about how they're aware of the general public even other scientists not being able to handle something so abstract, to a level of complexity they are incapable of encorporating It into the general scheme of the way they percieve the world because its on such a superficial level. When asked to retract hos statements: "You can kill me of you want but it wont change the fact the earth revolves around the sun." one of the boldest statements made in front of church, one of the most powerful inst. At the time.