Most Famous scientist you've worked with.

[neurocomp2003]

So whose the most famous scientist (in your eyes/field) you've worked with or come close to working with? Mine would be Sue Becker,(and neil burgess/John Okeefe through her)

 

[quasar987]

My old "last year of college physics project" teacher is relatively famous around here in Quebec. He has been on the radio, wrote many articles for various magazines, wrote a "relativity: animate it yourself" award-winning book, and is the author a conference on relativity that is absolutely fascinating. I've seen it 3 times; it is the absolute best conference I've attended to and probably will.

Here's his website anyway: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/~durand/

The 3 last links are (bijective) maps to his serious papers. Very mumbo-jumbo stuff but some ppl might be interested (marcus, selfAdjoint ?)

 

[yourdadonapogostick]

um, myself

 

[MalleusScientiarum]

I work with a professor who was a postdoc for Anthony Leggett, so by one degree of separation him.

 

[Kalimaa23]

Hmm, I study in Europe so there is a larger amount of "pedigree" around on the average. There are numerous links, but my QM professor is two degrees separated from Louis de Broglie and Werner Heisenberg, one of the photonics profs over here did her dissertation with Ilia Prigogine. The aformentioned QM prof also has Polyakov's son in law working in his department, and Polyakov himself is known to drop by often.

Haven't really worked with any "famous" people myself, but when I was waiting for my thesis advisor in front of his ULB office, I noticed that Brout and Englert (of the Higgs-Brout-Englert mechanism) had their offices next to him. Englert walked by as I stood there, and it's pretty weird to see someone who you only heard of in textbooks.

 

[neurocomp2003]

cool... by one degrees separation...greg hinton and simon haykin...

 

[mathwonk]

i was just curious as to which forum would be the proper resting place for a "name dropping" thread.

 

[philosophking]

And some resources:

--Just enter a professor's last name (and first, although it doesn't matter too much) here: http://www.genealogy.ams.org/html/search.phtml to get an interesting list of advisors and advisees

--This site: http://www.ams.org/msnmain/cgd/index.html is particularly useful for finding "collaboration distance". Note the default option can be Erdos, because it computes the supposed "Erdos number" of a given mathematician, which seems to be something math profs have been boasting about lately :P.

I'm working with a prof who studied under Harary, who obviously worked with Erdos. There is also a prof in the department I'm at right now who used to talk a lot with Erdos.

 

[jcsd]

Einstein stole his theories from my brain using the power of elctromagnetic waves, also the CIA have replaced most of my friends and family with imposters.

 

[Townsend]

Einstein stole his theories from my brain using the power of elctromagnetic waves, also the CIA have replaced most of my friends and family with imposters.

I hate it when that happens, makes me so mad..

 

[jcsd]

I hate it when that happens, makes me so mad..

'Twas my own fault, I forget to wear my tinfoil hat

 

[Moonbear]

i was just curious as to which forum would be the proper resting place for a "name dropping" thread.

Yes, this is an interesting one.

Someone mentioned the "geneology" thing above, and that really made me laugh. The program I did my post-doc in tried to do that at one point, just do like a "family tree" of trainees and trainees of trainees, but since the training program was going into its 35th year (I think) while I was there, it quickly turned more into a web than a tree and seemed it would just be easier to just stick up the membership list of the society founded by some of the old-timers there...it's hard to find someone in the field of reproduction who doesn't have some connection to that program, either as a trainee or trainee of a trainee or a collaborator, etc. They had a wall of photos along a hallway of all the past trainees (just those funded by the 35 years of training grants, not even all the trainees who had worked in those labs), and it was like a wall of "fame" of who's who in reproductive biology. (Though, once they stuck my picture up there, I dubbed it the "Wall of Shame." )

 

[neurocomp2003]

well the idea was to whom yuou have worked with(or whom you were suppose to have a project with) not a degree of separation...but someone else started teh degree thing in one of the posts after mine.

 

[Monique]

I have had lunch meetings with professors that were invited to give presentations for the department, so have met quite a few (it was students-only).

 

[mathwonk]

i was born on the same planet with most of the top scientists of the last few decades, that would be mars. i also shook hands with bo diddly once.

 

[Gokul43201]

i was born on the same planet with most of the top scientists of the last few decades, that would be mars.

Clever ! A thinly veiled sexist remark !

 

[mathwonk]

that would be salome who wore the veil.

 

[rachmaninoff]

--Just enter a professor's last name (and first, although it doesn't matter too much) here: http://www.genealogy.ams.org/html/search.phtml to get an interesting list of advisors and advisees

This was fun! I entered one of my professors, apparently he's a direct academic descendant of Euler! (11th generation)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

So whose the most famous scientist you've worked with or come close to working with?

Do you mean as a patient or subject?