Re: OT again but I'm curious.......

<hhc314@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1154900355.323793.159500@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Archemedes ... plus it is arguable that he
pre-dated both Newton and Leibniz in the discovery of integral
calculus.

Hmm, I may have to read up on this.

In physics, the list of MAJOR contributors is quite long

Undoubtedly. But I'm sure a lot of them are/were stuffy profs who worked
hard to get their results. The question of this thread was, who would you
like to meet? ;)

and opinions
vary regarding the order placement on this list in terms of importance.

Very much so a matter of opinion!

By contrast, Hawking's major contributions are similar to Percy
Bridgeman's...mostly authoring coffee table books, not on physics but
focused on cosmology.

As I understand, he's more concerned with quantum physics, in particular
connecting to gravity. It's notoriously hard to test theories when your
closest test region is thousands of light-years away, surrounded by swirling
matter emitting x-rays, and the gravitational stress is so high, your probe
won't survive, nor will it be able to send a signal to tell you what's going
on! Others are working on quantum gravity as well, but I imagine the
typical graviton represents a very small value of force, thus making
detection of individual particles much more difficult than, say, the quantum
of electric current, the electron.

In fact, you likely won't be able to find either
of these names even receiving mentioned in any legitimate Physics 101
text, or to the extent of my knowledge, in any advanced graduate level
texts in physics.

Hmm, let me check. Neither appears in my 101/102 textbook set
(_Fundamentals of Physics_, Halliday, Resnick, Walker, 6th ed., Wiley), but
Feynman appears in _Modern Physics_, Crane, 2nd ed., Wiley. I thought I had
seen a picture of "that wheelchair guy", but I guess I was mistaken. I see
a book of his is suggested in the cosmology chapters.

As I've said above, the list is very long, but as far as I can tell,
the name Hawking, although a media darling, is not on any physicists
list.

The thing about Hawking is, whether or not he's done any research that
produced results (again, I imagine that's hard to do), he's done some nasty
math (much of quantum physics goes over my head at the moment), and put the
thought into explaining it in simple terms.

As for lists, the first two pages in this book list about 50 events (most
with one or more names given) in physics in the last ~120 years. And that's
just the events Krane chose to list. We can both agree a vast amount of
work has been accomplished in the last century or two!

Tim

--
Deep Fryer: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms


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