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I think that Albert Einstein is the greatest physicist of all time.

Turtle

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DITTO.

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I was under the impression Newton discovered it independently (maybe simultaneously), I didn't think he collaborated with leibnitz.

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That sounds reasonable and if there was any collaboration, it was kept to a minimum.

I have a history of mathematics book by Burton and it goes into the detail of that rivalry. Pretty heated if you ask me.

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And Newton did much more than calculus.

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I'm not sure, but I've always like Liebniz's notation WAY better than Newton's.

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How many people have invented a totally new, revolutionary kind of math?

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Well, I'm working on something called "Calculometry"...

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Originally posted by voyeur:
I was under the impression Newton discovered it independently (maybe simultaneously), I didn't think he collaborated with leibnitz. And Newton did much more than calculus. How many people have invented a totally new, revolutionary kind of math?

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I actually heard that newton tried to sue leibnitz when he came up with the different notations for calculus becuase he said the ideas were his first, so that should answer your ideas on collaboration. The main differences I think between their formulations of calculus was newton didn't accept the integral as a sum of infintissimals where leibnitz did, and liebnitz's notation is much more intuitive and conceptually pleasing (his is the d/dx type where as newton used pretty much only the f'(x) notation).

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Originally posted by Heumpje:
Another person whom i greatly admire for his contribution to physics is Bob Laughlin. Apparently he is not a very nice person to work with, but his invention of the quantum Hall effect was really magnificent.

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Just wondering, ever since Dr. Horst Stormer gave a lecture on the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect to my physics class last year I've been very interested in FQHE. Stormer and Tsui were the guys who actually discovered it whereas Lauglin was the guy who developed the theory for why it happens. Stormer gave an incredible presentation and is a VERY VERY nice guy! I mean he came to Boise Idaho and took time to talk to a high school physics class(he actually wanted to talk to us becuase we had recently just developed the first ap physics program in idaho but...) how many Noble laureates do that? I just thought it was strange that you said Lauglin wasn't a nice guy to work with becuase it seems so completely opposite of Stormer. Where did you here these things? Anyway I'm now grading for a professor here who worked a lot with Stormer and Tsui (too bad he didn't share in the Nobel) but I'm hoping this might hook me up to do some future research with him!

Oh by the way I'd also go for Feynman or Newton. Einstien had some super idea's but when you actually look at who gave the most to physics, I'd say its Newton, and RPF was just a really cool guy!

I'm also currently working on my Master thesis and the Prof I work with is a friend of Bob. Apparantly Bob is a very nice guy to have a normal conversation with, but on conferences, and things like that, when he's talking physics he's just not such a nice guy. He will ask the speaker nasty questions (which is, of course, fine IF they're reasonable) and continiously interrupt. The general audience finds this very annoying (not my prof of course: he is founder of the BOB Fan-club ;) ). Anyway, that's what I heard. Perhaps they are just rumours from people who would have liked to write down a FQHE theory and win that Noble prize....

It was Archimedies! Danm you Zeus!

In up-and-comings, Steven Gubser is pretty impressive. He started publishing important string theory papers as an undergrad (!) and just got full tenure at Caltech at age ~23 after they stole him away from Princeton/IAS. It's sort of scary...

Both worked in more than one branch of physics (Newton in gravity and "Opticks", Einstein in relativity and quantum mechanics).

Both spent years on unproductive researches (Newton on Alchemy, Einstein on his Unified Field Theory).

Both had more than one super brilliant idea (Newton had his three laws of motion plus the insight that a body in orbit about a center of force with conservation of angular momentum experiences only a radial acceleration, Einstein had special relativity, general relativity, and the photon)

As physicists I consider them equal. But Newton was more. He was one of the three greatest mathematicians in history (the other two are Archimedes and Gauss). For sheer productive intellect, Newton beats anybody we know of in history.

Anyway, I once read that Landau once came up with a rating system for the greatness of physicists. I believe he rated the physicists on a scale of 1 to 5 -- 1 being the best; 5 being the worst. I believe he gave Einstein a 1, but he only gave himself a 2.