On 9-5-2010 15:03, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>>> Pitty all the great scientists and mathematicians lived centuries
>>>>> ago, eh?
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, because we had quantum physics down pat centuries ago.
>>>
>>> Sure, science is still happening today. But name just *one* scientist
>>> who's alive today who has done anything so world-alteringly significant
>>> that almost every man, women and child in the Western world knows their
>>> name.
>>>
>>> Yeah, exactly.
>>
>> How about Benoit Mandelbrot or Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins?
> 
> Hawking I'll give you. (I bet he's *really* fun conversation...)
> 
> Everybody recognises fractals when they see them; far fewer recognise 
> the name of Mandelbrot (or Julia or Pickover or Lorenz or Barnsley or...)
> 
> Richard Dawkins? Seriously, other than writing a book, what has this guy 
> ever done?

He tried a.o. to compute how much change that a gene is identical to 
yours is needed to make it worthwhile for you to sacrifice your life for 
the other person. And other computations to find genes with an 
amplification factor greater than one. Read his "selfish gene", which 
actually does not claim that genes act selfishly.

One of the problems nowadays is that there are much more and cheaper 
celebrities than scientist. Most tv gameshows are full of them, mostly 
ones that nobody has ever heard of. That decreases the chance of 
somebody that actually knows something or can do something to come in 
contact with a broader audience.

There are many scientists that have done things that influence 
everybody's live still alive. Most of them indeed not very well known. 
How many people know e.g. Tim Berners-Lee or any of the nobel prize 
winners of the last 20 years? OTH there are people that are so well 
known that you would probably not count them as scientists, Like David 
Attenborough. As an intermediate conclusion: being well known costs a 
lot of time, so it is one or the other.

Jane Goodall might be a compromise, did a lot of real scientific work 
before, now uses her name to accomplish other things.

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