{"id":2319,"date":"2010-06-19T11:48:29","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T18:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/?p=2319"},"modified":"2010-06-19T11:48:29","modified_gmt":"2010-06-19T18:48:29","slug":"where-have-the-great-scientists-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/2010\/philosophy\/where-have-the-great-scientists-gone.html\/","title":{"rendered":"Where have the great scientists gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can anyone name three great scientists of the modern age? Those who have become household names and have changed the way we think? Stephen Hawking is probably the last scientist that comes to mind – and he made his famous discoveries on gamma radiation of black holes in 1974.<\/p>\n

Where have all the giants gone? Ever since Copernicus, science has always had heroes. Those who transformed the way we look at the world and advanced our scientific understanding. Names like Louis Pasteur, Kelvin, Einstein, and Faraday. And more recently in the 20th century, we had the giants of quantum mechanics – Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, Feynman, Chandrasekhar and many others.<\/p>\n

But ask someone to name a few scientists in the past 40 years, and you come up with a blank. No one, not even a single person<\/em> springs to mind no matter what the field. Talk about economics? John Nash achieved fame way back in 1950 with his “Nash Equilibriums.” Astrophysics? Stephen Hawkings in 1974. Edwin Hubble died in 1953. Particle physics or relativity? Though our knowledge has advanced quite a bit, there are no distinctive names that spring to mind in recent times. Computer science? Jon Von Neumann died in 1957. Alan Turing in 1954.<\/p>\n

Where have all the great scientists gone??<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Great<\/a><\/strong>
Great scientists are no more<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Looks like whenever I read about scientific research, I only hear about funding. It’s all about money. Bigger particle accelerators. Bigger grants. Bigger teams. Where have all the bold individuals gone? It seems as if nothing is possible in science these days unless you have the backing of a governmental organization with lots of money or a corporation who wants to profit off the research. Who do we look up to? Who do our young scientists hold up as a role model in recent times and say “I want to be like him or her”?<\/p>\n

Many<\/a> different lists<\/a> have been made<\/a> of the greatest scientists in history. And not one<\/em> of them contains an entry after 1950. Most stop at Stephen Hawking, if not earlier. There can be only two reasons for this.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We understand the universe so well that only those with huge resources can find out something new<\/li>\n
  2. The scientific environment isn’t conducive to these maverick geniuses<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If the first point is the reason, then there’s not much we can do. But science is full of examples where people thought they knew everything. In 1900 Lord Kelvin is famously supposed to have claimed “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement”. Have we finally reached that stage, or are we as wrong as he was? I don’t know.<\/p>\n

    But if the first point is false, then the second must be true. Perhaps it’s no longer enough to be a genius. Maybe you also have to be a politician. Perhaps you need to have “people skills” and learn to work with others and pull the right strings. But most geniuses hate authority. They rebel. They work alone. And they’re mostly not very social. There’s a latin quotation which goes:<\/p>\n

    Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit – “There has never been any great genius without an element of madness”<\/em><\/p>\n

    If this is true, does our system allow these slightly reclusive geniuses to flourish? Or has science become so institutionalized by the government and corporations that there’s simply no place for them anymore? I don’t have the answers. I only know that the days of the great scientists may be dead. And I hope with all my heart that many years later someone glancing at this article laughs and says “Look how wrong he<\/em> was!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The age of great scientists is gone. Now we only have teams wanting bigger hardware, and bigger grants. Is this inevitable, or is it a problem with the system?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere have the great scientists gone?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The age of great scientists is gone. Now we only have teams wanting bigger hardware, and bigger grants. 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