/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5165627]

Who are the most unappreciated scientists ever, /sci/?

Pic related, she'll never be more than a footnote attached to the discovery of DNA's double helix structure. "Oh yeah and Watson and Crick copied a lot of their research from this lady but she died before anyone thought to give her credit."

[Anonymous No.5165635]

Rosalind Franklin would be completely forgotten if it weren't for Watson and Crick. If anything, she is overappreciated.

[Anonymous No.5165644]

>>5165635
They never thought to giver her any fucking credit in the first place. And her contributions were downplayed in Watson's book.

[Anonymous No.5165649]

plus she died because she took way too many xrays of herself not knowing the consequence. how stupid of her

[Anonymous No.5165650]

I do agree but I also thing that Tesla is also a bit underrated when it comes to electricity since everyone bandwagons Edison on it.

[Anonymous No.5165654]

>>5165644

She was given some credit. Her only contribution was the data she collected. She never would have figured out the structure of DNA by herself, and openly mocked the idea of double helical DNA when it was first presented.

[Anonymous No.5165656]

>>5165650

go back to reddit please

[Anonymous No.5165660]

[Anonymous No.5165661]

>>5165650
What the fuck? Tesla is a fucking science god to hipsters. He's probably one of the 10 most famous scientists of all time. How the hell can somebody that famous and beloved possibly be "unappreciated"?

[Anonymous No.5165662]

here come the teslafags

[Anonymous No.5165666]

>>5165654
>She was given some credit.

Posthumously, and not by those who relied on her research. I'm sure she'd be very satisfied.

[Anonymous No.5165668]

>>5165661
During his lifetime at least he got no credit, like Franklin.

Meanwhile everyone was sucking Edison's dick.

[Anonymous No.5165673]

>>5165666

Her data was cited in the paper. What other form of credit should she have been given?

[Anonymous No.5165678]

>>5165673
co-authorship and a Nobel prize

[Anonymous No.5165681]

>>5165678

Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously. She was dead when Watson and Crick were given the prize. Why in god's name should she get co-authorship? She openly mocked the idea of double-helical DNA.

[Anonymous No.5165683]

>>5165668
This thread isn't about people in their lifetime. In the very first post the OP said that someone should have been appreciated more for something that happened AFTER their death. And hell, even during his lifetime he was famous for his crazy electricity stunts.

[Anonymous No.5165684]

Have you guys heard of a guy named Nick Teslo? He's pretty unknown but he invented electricity and an earthquake machine that could destroy the world.

[Anonymous No.5165699]

>>5165681
>Why in god's name should she get co-authorship?

Because her research was vital to the discovery of the double helix, whatever her feelings about it may have been.

Maurice Wilkens was offered co-authorship and what did he do besides show Waktins some pictures that came out of Franklin's lab?

[Anonymous No.5165705]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law

Georges Lemaître's great discovery was named after the guy who copied his research two years later. And his "hypothesis of the primeval atom" was given the incredibly stupid nickname of "the big bang theory" by one of the idea's detractors, and for some reason it stuck.

[Anonymous No.5165711]

>>5165699

He denied co-authorship because he felt he didn't deserve it. Franklin didn't write the paper or contribute at all to the hypothesis. All that happened is that Watson and Crick looked at her data and came to conclusions that she couldn't.

[Anonymous No.5165716]

>>5165711
>All that happened is that Watson and Crick looked at her data and came to conclusions that she couldn't.

Yeah, her research was instrumental to the discovery, even if she weren't the one to realize what she'd found. Columbus got credit for discovering "the new world" even though he thought he was in India. Why should Franklin be treated any differently? Because she's a woman?

[Anonymous No.5165718]

>>5165716
>even if she weren't

er, wasn't

[Anonymous No.5165724]

>caring about appreciating scientists rather than science itself
>2012

[Anonymous No.5165725]

>>5165716

She was the best x-ray crystallographer at the time and that was her contribution and its recognized as such. She did nothing else why should she get credit for other peoples accomplishments?

[Anonymous No.5165733]

>>5165627
As a recent graduate of a good biology program, I don't think I ever had a class that mentioned Watson and Crick without mentioning Franklin at the same time.

[Anonymous No.5165736]

>>5165724
>Why should people be recognized for their hard work?

>>5165725
The bottom line is that her research was necessary to the discovery. Meaning that she deserved co-authorship. It doesn't fucking matter if she wrote any part of the paper or not.

Give credit where credit is due. Franklin deserves more than a citation and a footnote in the history of science.

[Anonymous No.5165739]

>>5165733
Well it's good to see that she's getting all sorts of unofficial recognition I guess.

[Anonymous No.5165740]

>>5165736
because the discovery is important, not the discoverer.

[Anonymous No.5165743]

>>5165733
I'm not a physics grad but I've only heard Lemaître mentioned in lecture once. Would any physics students care to say what they've heard about Lemaître?

[Anonymous No.5165747]

>>5165649
lol wat?
just because you dont know stupid != ignorace doesnt make you stupid, does it?

[Anonymous No.5165748]

>>5165736

>Meaning that she deserved co-authorship.

No it doesn't. She didn't author the paper.

[Anonymous No.5165751]

>>5165740
Which means that its okay for other people to get the credit I guess?

"What are you bitching about Lemaître/Franklin/Tesla? It's all for the greater good of science! Your compensation is your satisfaction in knowing that you helped even if no one will thank you for it while you're alive. Oh but your colleagues will become academia's rock stars in their lifetimes on account of your research."

[Anonymous No.5165755]

>>5165748
>No it doesn't. She didn't author the paper.

Irrelevant. The paper couldn't have been authored at all without her.

[Anonymous No.5165806]

>>5165736

There's multiple documentaries and many programs covering her and her contribution and how AT THE TIME NOT ANYMORE she was snubbed she is not a footnote she is probably more well known then the people who actually won the nobel prize because of how much people have covered her.

[Anonymous No.5165855]

>>5165755

So should Einstein get coauthorship for every cosmological paper written in the past 70 years?

[Anonymous No.5165866]

>>5165855
yeah

[Anonymous No.5165876]

>>5165866

lol

[Anonymous No.5165886]

>>5165855
That's not what I mean. She was part of the process of the discovery of the double helix. She was part of the team, but no one cared enough to mention it because "lol science isn't for girls."

[Anonymous No.5165906]

>>5165654
>openly mocked the idea of double helical DNA when it was first presented.
[Citation needed]

[Anonymous No.5165912]

>>5165886

>She was part of the team, but no one cared enough to mention it because "lol science isn't for girls."

That's not what happened. She wasn't "part of the team" at all. They just used her data and came to better conclusions than her.

[Anonymous No.5165919]

underappreciated?
to the general public, I'd say either Lagrange or Hamilton

[Anonymous No.5165924]

>>5165886
>hasn't heard of emmy noether

[Anonymous No.5165940]

>>5165906

In the paper that she published in the same issue of Nature that Watson and Crick published in, she specifically stated that DNA was not a double helix.

[Anonymous No.5165964]

[Anonymous No.5165977]

>>5165627

Watson went to my University. He isn't even mentioned that much without Franklin here.

[Anonymous No.5166174]

>>5165964
Oh please. Dawkins embodies the worst of the celebrity academic.

Plus hordes of people would cut off their right arms to suck him off, that's not exactly "unappreciated."

[Anonymous No.5166176]

>>5166174

you are really quite daft

[Anonymous No.5166227]

>>5166174
" Dawkins embodies the worst of the celebrity academic."
But all his work has helped mobilize legions of sophomoric trolls on the internet to embarrass and discredit rationalist and freethinker mindsets!!! And he has managed to do so without increasing science funding a single penny or teaching the general populace a single thing!!!

[Anonymous No.5166233]

>>5166227

I learned about evolution from the selfish gene.

[Anonymous No.5166243]

>>5166233
So? Does that mean that all textbook writers are top tier scientists?

[Anonymous No.5166318]

>>5166243
he came up with the concept of the "meme".

[Anonymous No.5166323]

>>5166318

he became one himself

[Anonymous No.5166625]

>most unappreciated scientists

Hannes Alfvén: The Maverick Plasma Astrophysicist, Nobel prize in physics 1970.

The problem: He considered the big bang theory as Cosmythology plus MathFiction.

He wanted to _know_ rather than believe in just another creation myth.

[Anonymous No.5166635]

not unappreciated by under appreciated perhaps

[Anonymous No.5166651]

Maxwell for non STEM majors, general public
considering his influence

[Anonymous No.5166702]

The one's you've never heard of.

[Anonymous No.5166709]

>>5165755
Are you aware of what exactly the term "co-author" means? It means someone who co-wrote the fucking paper, which she didn't. Just because it was her data doesn't mean shit, just like Penzias and Wilson didn't deserve the Nobel Prize. Anyone can record measurements (if they're trained to obviously) but unless you contribute some actual brainpower your contribution does not deserve a co-authorship or a Nobel Prize, especially a trend-breaking posthumuous one.

[Anonymous No.5166729]

>Penzias and Wilson didn't deserve the Nobel Prize

but the big bangers needed some support.
That's the politics of science.

[Anonymous No.5166790]

This badass right here.

Oliver Heaviside was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who:

>adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits
>invented mathematical techniques to the solution of differential equations (later found to be equivalent to Laplace transforms)
>reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and magnetic forces and energy flux >independently co-formulated vector analysis.

[Anonymous No.5166850]

>>5166790
>was completely unable to function in society
>had to rely on family and friends to support him
>was a complete dick to said family and friends

[Anonymous No.5166869]

>>5166850

>Alpha as fuck

[Anonymous No.5166878]

>>5166709
Penzias and Wilson contributed to the discovery, it was measurement and interpretation. Many Nobel prizes have been awarded for less.

[Anonymous No.5167629]

Does anyone here have a reference for Franklin mocking the structure of DNA?

[Anonymous No.5167660]

He should be more famous than einstein.

[Anonymous No.5167669]

No Alfred Russel Wallace? For shame.

[Anonymous No.5167840]

This guy.

Sure everyone knows his name. But no-one really knows why. He's like Einstein, every member of the public knows his name but not really what he did.

I don't think many people understand his sheer genius. He's impacted so many areas of Physics it's unreal and in the 16th century.

[Anonymous No.5167842]

>>5167840
And as an afterthought to his obsession with alchemy and theology.

[Anonymous No.5167848]

>>5167660
Not really. Dirac pretty much had the dynamical equation already, just in the (what is now referred to as "modern", by the way) algebraic form.

Shcrodinger just gave it in x-representation (Independent of everyone else, of course. The work was his, but he was the first just by chance.)

[Anonymous No.5168241]

>>5166625
>He wanted to _know_ rather than believe in just another creation myth.

I've heard that Lemaître's "hypothesis of the primeval atom" was originally mocked because he was a priest and everyone thought that he was just trying to prove that God created the universe or something.

[Anonymous No.5168320]

>>5167629

>By the end of 1951 it was generally accepted at King's that the B form of DNA was a helix, but after she had recorded an asymmetrical image in 1952 May, Franklin became unconvinced that the A form of DNA was helical in structure.[42] In July 1952, as a practical joke on Wilkins (who frequently expressed his view that DNA was helical), Franklin and Gosling produced a death notice regretting the 'death' of helical crystalline DNA (A-DNA).

[Anonymous No.5168423]

>>5168241
>hypothesis of the primeval atom

It was originally invented by theologist Robert Grosseteste (1168..1253), first head of the university of Oxford. He had the vision that his god created a tiny spot of light that expanded rapidly taking the (simultaneously created) matter with it to form a spherical cosmos.

"I was there when Abbé Georges Lemaître first proposed this theory. Lemaître was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing.

"There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

"We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture." - Hannes Alfvén

[Anonymous No.5168455]

>>5167848
Seriously, between the DIrac, Schrodinger, Poincarre, Einstein and others of this time, I just cannot make sense of this period. There was such an activity, and such a convergence of great minds AND new paths to explore than I cannot possibly say who exactly contributed the most to what.

[Anonymous No.5168472]

>>5166174

le edgy agnostic

[Anonymous No.5168508]

>>5168472
Name calling isn't going to make Dawkins start behaving like a real scientist.

[Anonymous No.5168538]

>>5168508

Dawkins did some pretty important work 40 years ago. He was a pioneer in the gene centered view of natural selection

[Anonymous No.5168553]

>>5168538
>Dawkins did some pretty important work 40 years ago.

I know and I acknowledge that. But that was 40 years ago.

This post pretty much sums up what he's been doing since >>5166227

[Anonymous No.5168590]

Guys, I'm a retardedfag trying to instruct himself. I am 30, left school to go into grunt work at 15.

tl;dr, I'm back to what I really ever wanted, sciences. I'm going into something applied Mathematics and Computers(I'm working as a software developper to not starve to death).

Who's a "fairly mainstream yet unappreciated genius" I can read on, and a book recommendation if possible. Don't you fucking say steve jobs.

[Anonymous No.5168605]

>>5168590
I'd suggest that you look around ITT for starters.

[Anonymous No.5169149]

I had never heard of Emmy Noether until undergraduate, which smacks of a cover up to me. I mean, she is god tier.