Which great scientist is currently the most under appreciated?

As a scientist, I have to say it's pretty cool to see people having this discussion. There are so many brilliant scientists from all disciplines who get no mainstream public recognition. The people that have been mentioned here are absolute luminaries. Describing them as under appreciated is kind of a joke, because the mere fact that the general public knows who they are is a testament to their lasting fame.

Having said that, there's only one person mentioned on this thread so far that might be described as under appreciated, and that's Santiago Ramon y Cajal. This guy worked out the cellular anatomy of the brain and nervous system back in the days when the only tools available were histological stains. From these stains, he produced astonishingly accurate drawings of neurological structures that were in many cases were only a few microns large...and he did this in the late 19th early 20th century! He had no way of testing the function of most of what he observed, but he nonetheless made amazingly accurate predictions of the functions of many, many cell types and sub cellular structures with nothing but hard work and intuition. He is no secret to the biological community (he did win a Nobel prize), but I would say that the public at large has no idea who he is. It's somewhat painful to give him this kind of credit because he was a notorious egomaniac.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell comes to mind. Freeman Dyson too.

Ludwig Boltzmann. The father of statistical mechanics, and strong advocate of atomic theory long before it was commonly accepted.

Someone mentioned Pauling, who was a great chemist, but his career is tarnished by the DNA model debacle and the fact that he was over-selling the benefits of vitamin C like it was snake-oil.

Galileo Galilei

Although Tesla is known among scientists, he is virtually unknown among the general populuation. Yet, when you consider the effect of his work, I think he is the most under appreciated scientist.

Charles Darwin

Not because he's not famous, but because the Bible literalists are required by their religious beliefs to disparage him and his work. The other under-appreciated scientists in this thread are simply unknown or ignored.

Rosalind Franklin

http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Rosalind_Franklin.php

Josef Mengele

Rosalind Franklin is an excellent choice.

Another brilliant woman was Philippa Fawcett, who finished above the Senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1890.

For the men, I'd add Ed Witten.

The woman who blinded Thomas Dolby with science.

Archimedes

Conundrum wrote:

Theoretical physicists or mathematicians may be included.

I would lean toward Tesla or Planck. Both were amazing and both made discoveries that are widely used today.

James Clerk Maxwell

He unified electricity and magnetism. A genius, very similar to Einstein's special relativity in weight. He also did a lot with optics and thermodynamics - e.g., the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.

Many good choices have been offered already. Turing & Tesla in particular.

I'd add Srinivasa Ramanujan to the list. Also, Emilie du Chatelet. Neither were as influential / impactful as various others, but they are virtually unknown, yet deserve not to be.

mathdude wrote:

Although Tesla is known among scientists, he is virtually unknown among the general populuation. Yet, when you consider the effect of his work, I think he is the most under appreciated scientist.

My house is on or very close to where he had his lab in Colorado Springs.

However, to say others would not have invented or discovered those items is not logical. Others were or would have worked in those areas.

Although Tesla was a great scientist and inventor, I don't agree that he is as under-appreciated as most of you think. When I poll my physics classes, many have heard of the likes of DaVinci, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Tesla, Edison, Hubble, Schroedinger, Oppenheimer, Heisenberg. Few have heard of Planck, Lorentz, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli (unless they've taken chemistry), Fermi, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Maxwell, Faraday. Incidentally, it was the work of Faraday that was the basis for Tesla's inventions.

Here some people that I think are even less appreciated than all those mentioned above (especially by John Q. Public):

Hans Bethe: Probably the most prolific nuclear physicist ever.

Lisa Meitner: Was paramount in our understanding of nuclear structure.

John Bardeen: Explained superconductivity, invented the transistor.

John Wheeler: Considered by many to be the father of modern cosmology.

There's plenty more I would rank over Tesla as more under-appreciated. If I gave a nod to one, I'd say John Bardeen. His invention ushered in the semi-conductor era.

Peter Duesberg

Kary Mullis

betterbutter wrote:

Claude Shannon

Do you have any information on this guy? :>)

Easily Al Gore.

Mark Wrighton invented the glow stick. I give him props.