Famous Scientists?

I responded to an article on "The Intersection" a couple of days ago about the inability of a vast segment of the United States' population to name a "living scientist" -- many of them still named the R.I.P. Albert Einstein. I suggested that part of the problem might be that there aren't the same kind of famous scientists now as were in the past. Einstein was partly made famous because of the dramatic nature of his predictions (time alteration, gravity bends light) and the dramatic nature of the confirmations (eclipse timing of occultations, global headlines). Other famous scientists like Stephen Jay Gould have been both prolific writers and in the news because of controversies (like creationism) or became media figures (like Carl Sagan) subsequent to much of their research career. So herewith, here are some somewhat famous scientists I can name, and brief reasons as to why. I consider myself scientifically literate, so I know a few. For scientists to make this list, I had to be able to come up with at least part of their name on my own and also know that they were significant scientists by contributions to the scientific literature and/or public understanding of science. (A couple of 'em have contributed to public misunderstanding, but I won't dwell on that.)

Astronomy/Astrophysics

Neil de Grasse Tyson -- writes a magazine column, high-profile job at AMNH Hayden Planetarium
Heidi Hammel -- Hubble Space Telescope astronomer who watched the Shoemaker-Levy impacts on Jupiter
Stephen Hawking -- famous for physics breakthroughs, black holes, a book
John Mather -- Cosmic Background Explorer Nobel prize-winner
Stephen Squyres -- scientist behind the Mars Rovers

Biology/Paleontology (Medicine)

E.O. Wilson -- famous Harvard evolutionary biologist, even though I admit I don't know much about him
Richard Dawkins -- another evolutionary biologist, famous for confronting creationists
Jack Horner -- dinosaur paleontologist, model for Sam Neill character in "Jurassic Park"
Michael Behe -- famous for writing a widely-publicized book about Intelligent Design
James Lovelock -- Gaia guy; I should note that I was reminded of him while looking up F. Sherwood Rowland (see below)
Anthony Fauci -- NIH head, HIV researcher
Craig Venter -- human genome researcher

Climate Science (general comment; this is obviously currently in the news, so both the fine practitioners and the pretender bozos have made names for themselves)

Stephen Schneider
Ralph Cicerone
James Hansen
Michael Mann
Gavin Schmidt
Roy Spencer
John Christy
Richard Lindzen
Raymond Pierre-Humbert
David Archer
Ken Caldeira
Fred Singer (hurts me to put him on the list, but he was easy to think of)


Geology/Oceanography

Haraldur Sigurdsson, volcanologist
Walter and Luis Alvarez, discoverers of the K/T boundary event
Jane Lubchenco -- current head of NOAA
Victoria Fabry -- investigator of ocean acidification effects
Harrison Schmitt -- geologist/astronaut, former Senator, know-nothing about climate change
Sylvia Earle -- deep-sea diver, writer, woman adventurer and explorer
Robert Ballard -- deep-sea researcher, most famously finder of the Titanic wreck

Physics/Chemistry

Stephen Chu -- Nobel Laureate (I think), current head of Department of Energy
Peter Higgs -- scientist who the Higgs boson is named after; I had to look up his first name
Note: I thought I couldn't think of a single living chemist. Then I remembered "Sherwood" (actually F. Sherwood Rowland) and Mario Molina, who received a Noble for making the connection between CFCs and stratospheric ozone destruction. Weird thing about names, too: because he's "F. Sherwood Rowland", there are a lot of references to "Sherwood and Molina" (Google it and see!) when it really should be "Rowland and Molina". Furthermore, Paul Crutzen, who also got the Nobel for this was completely off my memory radar until I looked up Sherwood, er, Rowland.

Somewhat-recently deceased, if not mentioned before

Richard Feynman -- string theory, Challenger disaster panel member, writer, joker, self-promoter, brilliant physicist, lock-picker
Gene Shoemaker -- famous for proving that meteorites make craters and for discovering asteroids and comets,
Charles Keeling -- CO2 monitoring, Keeling CO2 curve

That's about it. Funny thing about polls, though; sometimes it takes time to make associations connect in the brain. As I was writing this, names (like Ballard, "Sherwood" and Molina, Feynman, Venter) started popping into my head. In a telephone poll, the brief time for response might make it more difficult to immediately conjure up names. If people had a little more time to think about it, they might start thinking of names, too.

Or maybe not. There really are a lot of people in the United States that don't care about (or don't understand, or don't trust) science. There's not much doubt about that. Unscientific America was right on the mark, and timely, too.