MHB Why are the most famous scientists physicists and not mathematicians?

[alexmahone]

World famous scientists like Newton, Einstein, Rutherford, Hawking are all physicists. However mathematicians like Gauss, Euler, Leibniz, Descartes etc are much less famous.

Why is that? Is it because most people can relate to physics better than maths?

 

[CaptainBlack]

World famous scientists like Newton, Einstein, Rutherford, Hawking are all physicists. However mathematicians like Gauss, Euler, Leibniz, Descartes etc are much less famous.

Why is that? Is it because most people can relate to physics better than maths?

1. Newton was also a mathematician.

2. Gauss, Euler and Descartes were also scientists.

3. Mathematicians are not scientists.

CB

 

[ThePerfectHacker]

World famous scientists like Newton, Einstein, Rutherford, Hawking are all physicists. However mathematicians like Gauss, Euler, Leibniz, Descartes etc are much less famous.

Why is that? Is it because most people can relate to physics better than maths?

Why are most famous people in the world celebrities?

 

[alexmahone]

Why are most famous people in the world celebrities?

Because they're celebrities? What's your point?

 

[ThePerfectHacker]

Because they're celebrities? What's your point?

But why? Why is someone like the queen of England so famous? The queen of England is a parasite. She achieved nothing whatsoever in her life. Even dictators of the world had to do something, work hard, to get that position. The queen is the most parasitic person, no individual accomplishments at all. She was simply handed over that position as she was born into it. She is not a gifted person, she is not smart, she is not artistic. She achieved nothing. But why is she famous?

The point is that people choose who they like. How famous someone is is determined by what others think of him. The reason why scientists are not as well known as celebrities on television is because the masses prefer the actors over the scientists. That is it. However, on this forum we talk more often of the scientists, for us they are more famous, as we value them more.

Most people can at least see some value in science, much harder for them to appreciate mathematics. Thus, they value the scientists more.

 

[Sherlock1]

I think science is conceptually more appreciable than mathematics. It's easier for someone to appreciate the work of Einstein than it's to appreciate that of, say, Grothendieck. I know more maths than physics, but I've a more general grasp of what Einstein did than what Grothendieck did. I think it's also far easier to get curious about science than maths. Therefore scientists tend to be understandably more famous than mathematicians.