• Question: Who do you think is the greatest scientist ever?

    Asked by freakyboy247 to Duncan, Kiran, Paul, Sarah, Sharon on 15 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Duncan Murdock

      Duncan Murdock answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      I think Charles Darwin has had the biggest influence of any scientist in the last 200 years. His theory of natural selection has totally changed the way we understand nature, and has even got into literature, economics, sociology and philosophy.

    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      If I have to choose one, then I would pick Alexander Fleming. He discovered the antibiotic penicillin. Penicillin has saved, and is still saving, millions of people around the world and most people at some point in their lives will have taken antibiotics of some form!

    • Photo: Paul Stevenson

      Paul Stevenson answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      I think it was Isaac Newton. He was around at a time when the modern idea of science was just beginning and gave the first great major theory (of gravity, and of motion) that showed that we could predict things with a single mathematical framework that covered everything from the movement of bodies on earth to the motion of planets round the sun

    • Photo: Kiran Meekings

      Kiran Meekings answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      Living or dead? And can I have 2? Dead scientists, I think Watson & Crick are amazing – they’re the guys that discovered DNA and worked out how that DNA encodes everything there is that makes us human.

      Alive I would pick David Attenborough. His shows are amazing – they really got me interested in animals and plants when I was younger and I think the way he puts across his passion for the natural world is inspiring…

      how about you?

    • Photo: Sarah Mount

      Sarah Mount answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      Well, my favourite was the mathematician Leonard Euler. He worked in almost every area of maths that was known about at the time he was alive and he even invented a few new fields of study himself. He worked right up until the day he died, but he seems to have had a full life. We still use some of the maths that Euler discovered in all sorts of areas of science, including computer graphics. There’s even a nice website named after him full of maths puzzles you can try out: http://projecteuler.net/

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