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George Jones
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Will Zefram Cochran be a physicist or an engineer. If physicist, in 21 years I'll necropost in this thread and nominate him.
George Jones said:Will Zefram Cochran be a physicist or an engineer. If physicist, in 21 years I'll necropost in this thread and nominate him.
Read the thread. I was asked and answered the very same question. Because the question is absurd. One has to choose where to stop the list, and if there is a side of physics, it's not technical. Actually, if you think about it, Connes is not a physicist.maverick_starstrider said:Why the hell should we only chose "fundamental" physicists? Especially today where most of "fundamental" physics is entirely unprovable. Is this more of this go string (or LQG) or go home nonsense?
Kurdt said:Wasn't it 2063 when he made his first warp flight?
humanino said:Read the thread. I was asked and answered the very same question. Because the question is absurd. One has to choose where to stop the list, and if there is a side of physics, it's not technical. Actually, if you think about it, Connes is not a physicist.
That's certainly not what I said. One can make a list of professional physicists the end of which is rather clear on one side (at the border between mathematics and physics) but which goes in many directions and in each of them it is hard to decide where it ends on the other side. Do you count electronics in condensed matter ? How about high precision magnetic measurements ? This is quite an important field both in terms of support to many other physics categories and also in terms of future developments.maverick_starstrider said:And what, condensed matter isn't physics?
humanino said:That's certainly not what I said. One can make a list of professional physicists the end of which is rather clear on one side (at the border between mathematics and physics) but which goes in many directions and in each of them it is hard to decide where it ends on the other side. Do you count electronics in condensed matter ? How about high precision magnetic measurements ? This is quite an important field both in terms of support to many other physics categories and also in terms of future developments.
Again : if you want to cut a list, it is natural to cut it starting from the well defined side.
I agree with you. That's part of the reasons why I deemed the initial question absurd. I was only trying to explain motivations behind the initial question and the usual answers one gets in the countless threads we already had.maverick_starstrider said:...
nicksauce said:IMO Weinberg as the greatest, and 't Hooft and Wilczek for being cool guys. I don't particularly like Freeman Dyson due to his religious views and his views on global warming.
Dyson has both praise and criticism of Weinberg in this NYRB review of Weinberg's book "Lake Views": http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/what-price-glory/Freeman Dyson said:What is wrong with his religous views and his views on Global Warming? Quite frankly, Weinberg seems like an ******* and Dyson seems like a cool guy.
"I'm heretical because I was studying climate change at least 30 years ago before it became fashionable"
-Dyson
Dyson was being published on climate change before Al Gore even heard of it.
Freeman Dyson said:In your opinion. Or who is your favorite. Freeman Dyson is my favorite. I think he is the best too.:!)