Why aren't there famous chemists/mathematicians in the public?

Haha, you think every elementary school child knows marie curie..lol. Most people learn pasteur in their high school biology with the ''cover meat with plastic and it won't have flies all over it versus the one left out in the open.I learned about Marie Curie when I was in elementary school, but that was because I was interested in science and reading books about famous scientists. I doubt the average elementary school student knows who she is, let alone what she is known for. In summary, despite the fame of physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, chemists and mathematicians often go unnoticed by the general public. This may be due to the fact that physics, with its grandiose concepts of the universe,
  • #36
WannabeNewton said:
Out of those you mentioned, Pavarotti and Wright were the only ones I knew xD.
Where is that fainting smiley from chat?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #37
Evo said:
Where is that fainting smiley from chat?
It has died my dear Evo. Tis' gone with the wind. But in all reality I have no idea what you mean lol.
 
  • #38
Evo said:
Et tu, Drakkith?

Alas, me as well Evo. But have no fear, my lack of knowledge on potent potables is just as bad.
 
  • #39
Oh dear. Ok, this is a science forum, not a culture forum. Now can people understand how average Americans don't know what Einstein did?

But ask them about Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and I don't even know who else is supposed to be famous.
 
  • #40
Evo said:
Uhm, Marne, you know I like you and think you're a great person, father, pet owner, etc... Have you been living under a rock? :cry:

I like my rock! I recently painted a smile face on it and everything! But seriously though, I never had an interest in paintings or musical theater. I balance out a little bit by knowing many writers, and composers, but I can look at art and just go "uhh...it's pretty? Maybe, I don't know, help me!"

I went to the Nutcracker once with an ex girlfriend, and I got so bored that I left for a 2 hour smoking break and just told her I couldn't get back in once I left. She figured out I was lying when I did the same thing with Cats.
 
  • #41
Einstein is famous also because he is considered as the most intelligent human ever lived on earth.
 
  • #42
jobyts said:
Einstein is famous also because he is considered as the most intelligent human ever lived on earth.
That is quite subjective. I could just as easily and justifiably say either Gauss or Newton was the most intelligent human to have ever lived.
 
  • #43
WannabeNewton said:
That is quite subjective. I could just as easily and justifiably say either Gauss or Newton was the most intelligent human to have ever lived.

True. But non-science people are usually going to say Einstein or Hawking. I don't think many people even know who Gauss is :frown:
 
  • #44
jobyts said:
Einstein is famous also because he is considered as the most intelligent human ever lived on earth.

I bet it's the other way around. :-p
 
  • #45
I have no idea who Neils deTysse Gryson is, but I am sure the reciprocal is true, and I'm counting on all of you not to tell him.
 
  • #46
zoobyshoe said:
I have no idea who Neils deTysse Gryson is, but I am sure the reciprocal is true, and I'm counting on all of you not to tell him.
<snork> Neils deTysse Gryson. I love you zoob, you made me laugh and forget the pigs for a moment.
 
  • #47
Evo said:
<snork> Neils deTysse Gryson. I love you zoob, you made me laugh and forget the pigs for a moment.
Don't worry about the pigs. Neils deTysse Gryson will solve the pig problem with physics, I bet.
 
  • #48
zoobyshoe said:
Don't worry about the pigs. Neils deTysse Gryson will solve the pig problem with physics, I bet.

Absolutely. And he will begin with the general solution, a spherical pig of uniform density.
 
  • #49
lisab said:
...a spherical pig of uniform density.
I'll believe that when pigs have wings.
 
  • #50
Too bad wings on a pig doesn't guarantee its flight capability
 
  • #51
Evo said:
We are on a science website, so I would hope that people here know about Einstein. The average American on the street knows the name from jokes and media, and perhaps even know E = mc2 but I would wager that most have no clue what that means or what his main accomplishments were.

When I say that I don't think of Einstein first, it doesn't mean that I don't know of Einstein's role in the creation of the bomb. Trust me, I know it well. He laid the theoretical groundwork, and he even encouraged FDR to build the bomb. But he never actively participated in the nuts and bolts of it. He also wanted it used against the Germans (whom he felt were getting close to a nuclear breakthrough themselves). In the end, after the two bombs were unleashed on Japan, he condemned their use.

Oppenheimer was, in contrast, directly involved in the Manhattan project. He was in favour of the bombs being used in Japan (at least until they were actually deployed, and he realized the horror of what he'd wrought). He is known as the "Father of the Atom Bomb" with good reason.

That's why I think of J. R. Oppenheimer when I think of the atom bomb. Not because I don't know who Einstein was, or his role in the whole thing.
 
  • #52
I've never really thought about what the public thinks of Einstein. When I hear "Einstein", I think "photoelectric effect". Probably because I can't count how many profs have explained that he won his Nobel for it, not relativity, as many believe.

I am a product of my education, I guess. :biggrin:
 
  • #53
lisab said:
he won his Nobel for it (photoelectric effect), not relativity

Nobel Prize Committee said:
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"

Nobel Prize website

In order to say that he didn't receive the prize for relativity, you would have to read that as "for his services (and by the way, we don't mean relativity) to Theoretical Physics". I don't read it that way.
 
  • #54
PhizKid said:
Too bad wings on a pig doesn't guarantee its flight capability
Why? Do you really want pigs flying around?
 
  • #55
zoobyshoe said:
Why? Do you really want pigs flying around?
What other way would a spherical pig with wings fly?
 
  • #56
Jimmy Snyder said:
What other way would a spherical pig with wings fly?
Not the point, is it? The point is pig bombs.
 

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