Pasteur, Lister and Koch for their understanding of medical hygiene and infectious disease transmission and Alexander Fleming for discovering antibiotics.
Thomas Edison for electric light, movies and the phonograph.
Tesla/Westinghouse for AC power and transmission.
Frank J. Sprague for the first successful electrically powered trolley cars, a precursor to much of today's electric traction based mass transit.
Countless people for refrigeration and all the places it was applied to.
The Wright brothers for powered flight.
Armstrong for the superhet radio receiver and FM.
Countless others for all sorts of things that weigh more heavily in the day to day existence than almost anything relating to our hobby.
Thomas Edison for electric light, movies and the phonograph.
Tesla/Westinghouse for AC power and transmission.
Frank J. Sprague for the first successful electrically powered trolley cars, a precursor to much of today's electric traction based mass transit.
Countless people for refrigeration and all the places it was applied to.
The Wright brothers for powered flight.
Armstrong for the superhet radio receiver and FM.
Countless others for all sorts of things that weigh more heavily in the day to day existence than almost anything relating to our hobby.
I dunno, but that thing was the greatest invention before sliced bread.
Let's not forget that Genghis Khan had a large impact on the world.
IMO there are few luminaries (certainly living) since the second world war, but they haven't been completely silent. The difference to me seems one of function, as humanity is more akin to group effects anymore, at least when judged upon a historic time scale. I mention WWII because it (JMO) marks a time when the intellectualism of humanity morphed from a science burden to an artistic or intellectual gestalt. The latter is propelled by group think/taste. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, right? Be that as it may, I have no particular person to attribute this effect. This time is simply the ebb of another time's flow. Or vice-versa.
Couldn't disagree more. The "group effect" as you call it is just the information age making it harder to romanticize "luminaries". We all know the stories of "inventors" like Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison, but the fact that their inventions were small improvents on the current technology has been forgotten because of all the prose exaggerating their accomplishments.
And even mores o, the kinds of improvements nowadays are even more incremental than these "luminaries" were. Who would qualify as our brightest star in the whole effort at CERN? LIGO? I could keep going. It's a lot of unnamed, hard-working, brilliant people. Plus, we tend to know a bit more about our geniuses than ever before, e.g. Kary Mullis, and their perhaps less-than-perfect parts, are less likely to romanticize them. And even in the latter's case, PCR was arguably not even his own invention, but rather the synthesis of several ideas already floating around and the result of collaborative effort.
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Daniel - thanks for dropping that name - a quick Google search for the uninformed does little more than to support the position that if we're talking about scientific or technical "impact", those who make notable contributions are still only human, and subject to the vagaries and inconsistencies of that condition.
Who can argue there's not a small measure of merit to this attribution; "Mullis has said that the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas has hurt science. He believes that "Science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are going to find out," not for what they actually produce. "
And then there's " A New York Times article listed Mullis as one of several scientists who, after success in their area of research, go on to make unfounded, sometimes bizarre statements in other areas. An article in the Skeptical Inquirer described Mullis as an "AIDS denialist with scientific credentials [who] has never done any scientific research on HIV or AIDS."
I just picked on that to illustrate a point - who knew that the people doing science could be so complicated?
Who can argue there's not a small measure of merit to this attribution; "Mullis has said that the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas has hurt science. He believes that "Science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are going to find out," not for what they actually produce. "
And then there's " A New York Times article listed Mullis as one of several scientists who, after success in their area of research, go on to make unfounded, sometimes bizarre statements in other areas. An article in the Skeptical Inquirer described Mullis as an "AIDS denialist with scientific credentials [who] has never done any scientific research on HIV or AIDS."
I just picked on that to illustrate a point - who knew that the people doing science could be so complicated?
And, Chris, you highlight exactly why I chose him as my example.
As you said maybe a very smart but opportunistic kook? I've had more than one LSD using friend where there is no longer a calibration point. The endless lecturing on seeing the world in another light and they can't even deal with the Japanoize.
Most are not.
I would wager few of us are so "colorful" as to claim seeing glowing racoons of any hue.
Well, we might be running off different working definitions of kook, but I do want to give credit where due: Kary Mullis did push forward PCR and get it over the hump of viability, which was an enormous contribution.
But I guess I go introspective when I read bios like his (which thematically isn't so unique). We're all pretty flawed creatures, no matter our virtues, and should be acknowledged as such. It's not just scientists that can be so complicated, but ALL of us.
100% disagree. The ubiquity and portability of audio, even limited to the music niche, has been transformative. It's substantially changed our environments and completely changed music.
Anonymous doesn't mean unimportant.
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