The greatest and most influential scientist

[naomi24]

Who would you say is the greatest and most influential scientist of all time - and why?

[TradeWithMe]

http://www.authspot.com/Poetry/The-Understatem ent-Hollow-Years.183481

Try to look at that!

[Matheous]

I think 'Trade with Me' is a server reply here as I got exactly the same reference to a question I asked in the Technology topics section.
Aside from that- for me the greatest was Leonardo Da Vinci whom I think had an astounding life in science & art. He was a true genius....

[Mortartube]

Nikola Tesla. The modern world wouldn't run without his inventions. He was a genius where electricity is concerned and he is my nominee.

Without him we wouldn't be using the internet. He invented the AC generator that is being used to power your computer.

[jake-the-peg]

I think that most people know relatively few scientists and only have a brief acquaintance with their achievements.

Everyone hears about Leonardo at school and are amazed at his visionary thinking.

But fewer people have heard of people like Hooke and Boyle and Lavoisier.

But your question was who was the most influential and I don't think Leonardo's ideas really caught on he didn't really kick start any great movement.

I think the most influential has to be Francis Bacon ( a contemporary of Shakespere) He did early work on many subjects but he pioneered the idea of inductive reasoning.

The idea that you build a theory on observation and from them draw predictions and test them with experiment.

Sound familiar?

He basically put the entire scientific method on a firm foundation.

We've pretty much forgotten about him now but his influence was gigantic

[Aquagility]

Surely this can only be Darwin.

[jake-the-peg]

Come on Darwin held on to his ideas for years and only published when somebody else was about to pip him at the post.

He might have been influential in popular culture but not so much amougst other scientists.

[fo3nix]

Newton for obvious reasons.

But perhaps Feynman ranks very highly, given his inspiration to other scientists.

[jno]

Einstein? It depends who you think your candidate has influenced. Edison has probably had as much influence on day-to-day life as anyone before or since, but it also depends whether you think of him as a scientist.

[Gromit]

Galileo Galilei.

Apart from his scientific endeavours, I think he is important because be helped break the stranglehold of the church on knowledge. His work was considered heretic and he was persecuted by the church, but his ideas were scientifically provable and were the building blocks for scientist who followed him.

It is always startling how the church held back humanity. When looking at a chronological list of scientists such as the one in the link below, not a great deal was allowed to happen from 200BC to 1500AD.

http://www.adherents.com/people/100_scientists .html

[dubliner]

If 'influential' is used neutrally, - i.e. it doen't matter whether you consider the influence to have been good or bad, but merely consider the extent of the influence, then Gromit has given the answer, - for over 1500 years virtually all of what passed for science in europe slavishly followed the writings of Aristotle. In this (admittedly limited) sense it will take Galileo, Newton etc another 1000 years to catch up.

Seriously though, my vote goes to Galileo because he had to start (almost) from scratch - even Newton (not a modest man) admitted that he 'had stood upon the shoulders of giants'.

[mibn2cweus]

No one mentioned Archimedes

[naomi24]

Thanks everyone. An interesting assortment.