If Tesla's visions had modern-day funding channels and hadn't been hindered by Edison...dude probably would have invented a freakin' time machine. Seriously. His ideas alone (wireless electricity?) were impressive. Hard to separate him on that level from Da Vinci though... Tough/impossible question to answer...
What makes you think Hawking is any smarter than any of the other living Physics Nobel Prize winners? He certainly hasn't contributed more to physics than any other person alive today.
I think pretty much how you rank anyone you've never met, is dead, and may be decades/hundreds of years long gone is going to be subjective. How do you objectively do this? For example, I thought Isaac Asimov was brilliant. Then I've read that he's stated he'd only met 2 people who were smarter than he : Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky. So now how do I rate these people with, say, an Ayn Rand? How do I rank, Jacob Barnett, the guy who has an IQ of 170, is working on astrophysics, advanced college calculus and physics, and expanding on Einstein's works, at the ripe old age of 12? Then there are mathematical geniuses like Ramanujan who you may never have heard of and who never really got much, if any, formal training, grew up in a dirt poor village, but was given the gift of math and many rank his genius with Newton, Euler, etc. Trying to rank these people is futile.
The more I read about Tesla, the more I am amazed. The guy's vision and work is simply incredible. And it makes me so sad when I read on about him. On the other hand, Thomas Edison is garbage. The guy hindered science as much as he helped it.
Only if coming in 2nd makes you the winner: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=6063569&postcount=18
You have to give credit to Edison he died very rich and Tesla very poor. Edison was smart in that he knew how to maximize the value of his inventions. I think Edison was pretty much self taught whereas Tesla had some college education. Its not like tesla "invented" EM many of these equations were developed my maxwell and other guys in the 1800s. He gave away his billions by signing away key patents to Westinghouse. However he was prolific in how to come up with useful stuff for all those theories. I will have to give the title to Carl Friedrich Gauss. Probably came up with more math then anyone.
another vote here for Tesla Dude had a hand in inventing all sorts of things ac power radio remote control spark plug I recall a story that came out recently that said Tesla's theory of wireless electricity distribution may be a reality in the near future.
Without a doubt, Sir Isaac Newton. When you judge them relative to their time period and their peers, it's not even close. Dude basically invented, or laid the critical groundwork for, physics and astrophysics... he freaking invented calculus in two weeks... on a dare.
I don't know if you've seen this before, but the TED conference from a couple of years ago gave us something like this on a small scale. WiTricity (with a demo near the end) : <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y1GqNN2Xe7g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Wireless electricity is inefficient. Would you want to run trains on roads? or cars on grass? You can do it,but would you really want to? There is are certain chemical properties that make metals good conductors.