Ask Ethan: Will physics ever see another Einstein or Newton? | Hacker News Reader

Ask Ethan: Will physics ever see another Einstein or Newton?

bigthink.com

12 pointsmellosouls11 comments

Einstein and Newton are not at the same level.

Newton revolutionized both science and mathematics. Heck, science was not even a thing before Newton. Mathematics was not that different from what it had been during the ancient Greece times.

Then all of a sudden Newton bursts onto the scene, mathematics experiences a quantum leap forward, and natural phenomena start being explainable with math equations and "principles".

In his time and for a few hundred years after, Newton was consider the closest thing to God humanity had to offer.

Were there other people even smarter than Newton? One can count Euler, Gauss, Einstein, Philip Anderson, Alexander Grothendieck, Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, Frank Wilczek, Terrence Tao. But none of them came within a hundred miles in revolutionizing math and science like Newton did. Because none of them changed the framework of how we do math and science, they just added new theorems and theories. (I don't mean to take away from how great all these people were and are; they simply showed up after Newton, and there was no other new framework to be discovered).

So, if the question is if we'll ever have another Newton, the answer is a definite and resounding "No". If another Einstein, then I believe yes, there will be plenty of other Einsteins.

>In his time and for a few hundred years after, Newton was consider the closest thing to God humanity had to offer.

Gottfried Leibniz may have disagreed.

I'm certainly no physicist, I don't know much on the subject, but does Stephen Hawking not count? As a layman I'd group him with Einstein and Newton as the greatest scientists I know of.

The average level is so much higher, or, really much more well known now than in the early 19xx’s. People will be hard pressed to duplicate his 1905 output, but somebody like Feynman has the social impact of Einstein. Bardeen won two Nobel prizes in physics (transistor and superconducting), and that’s not too shabby. Sagan didn’t operate at this level but he had the impact on society of “a scientist” so he also must be considered.

Before ww ii, knowing college graduates was somewhat rare. Now, one can know 100’s of phd’s by just being active in a field. Things that are less rare are less significant.

i just found out my manager has a phd in physics. my friend does too actually. neither are using those degrees

I think a lot of the early quants were physics/physical modeling types that changed from dynamics studies of chemical or physical processes to financial ones. Way more $$ in the latter.

Surely we have already seen, and will see again in the future people of equal or greater ability. They will just not be as memorable, their accomplishments competing for limited memory and attention with a growing pile of more foundational knowledge from past people. First mover advantage in action.

Article's question seems to be whether there are likely scientific discoveries to come, which will change science as much as Newtonian mechanics and relativity did.

Yes of course. Quantum mechanics is right up there, and emergent quantum gravity certainly will be if it comes to fruition.

I suspect that if there ever is, we'll never know because everything they do that the public does get to hear about will be owned by the company or organization they work for. So it could be NASA, or IBM, etc., and not the specific person who figures out the new things.

I didn't read the article but I doubt it. Mass education has seen to that.

No.

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