<p>who is the greatest physicist in your opinion??</p>
<p>edit: no , just prove why einstein sucks? whats so great about newton</p>
<p>einstein. </p>
<p>that is, until i take the baton.</p>
<p>I'm no physics expert, but wouldn't it be Newton? He came up with the three laws that are the basis for all of physics. </p>
<p>Please don't make me defend my claim, I'm more of a History/English person.</p>
<p>more comments please...</p>
<p>Umm, this is sort of a silly question, but I like Newton more. That is perhaps only because I haven't taken the more advanced stuff where Einstein's work shows up.</p>
<p>I'd say Einstein was greater because his works essentially overturned Newton's and Galileo's laws. However, Newton was Einstein's predecessor.</p>
<p>lets pretend this is debate.</p>
<p>what if i say that since newton came before einstein, and einstein used newton's ideas, you have to admit newton was better? you gotta have a father to have a son. sure someone else could have come with gravity, but it wasnt guaranteed necessarily.</p>
<p>Einstein was very creative but Newton smarter. Which makes a better physicist?</p>
<p>One one hand, Newton invented calculus to support his laws of motion and gravity while Einstein actually had to farm some of his math work out because he wasn't capable of it. On the other hand, Einstein's pioneering work in quantum mechanics and his ability to put together the work of other physicists to produce something as startlingly original his theories of relativity have done considerably more to change the shape of the world than anyone I know.</p>
<p>A draw with a slight edge to Einstein?</p>
<p>i am not really interested in physics , but those who keep up with current events or so. is there anything scientists think einstein was wrong about? anything they are working on to check on his theory and its validity?</p>
<p>honestly, i think einstein is better, but i gotta fight this debate thing at school. so thx for your help</p>
<p>They pertain to totally different areas of physics...Einstien helped open the feild of Quantum mechanics, whereas Newton created Newtonian mechanics. The question is pointless, they're like apples and oranges. The two sciences, while both under the label of "physics," are completely different.</p>
<p>Newton because Einstein had to learn about Newton's laws to reach the pedestal where society now places him. Furthermore, if Newton had years of other scientists work to reflect on, as did Einstein, Newton would totally beat Einstein even more than he does now. Newton had to start practically from scratch and is serves provided many of the laws for physics. Lets see Einstein do that; if there was no Newton, then there might not be Einstein. Lets not forget who invented Calculus here too...something that is also critical to physics.</p>
<p>There are rumors that some of Einstein's theory could use tweeking at the edges, but it's incredibly solid. What Einstein is more famous for are his "failures". He worked for decades to create single theory of everything (the unified field theory) which is really one of the remaining great quests of physics. The problem turned out to be much tougher than anyone expected, so it's hard to be to critical he couldn't solve it.</p>
<p>Another other was one he labeled his "biggest mistake" that may not be, the "cosmological constant", something he came up with to correct an apparent error in his equations. It's playing a prominent role in modern attempts to explain why the universe is expanding, another great quest of physics.</p>
<p>Finally, despite his pioneer work in quantum mechanics (the source of his Nobel Prize, not Relativity), he was convinced it was all wrong and would come to nothing. Dead wrong.</p>
<p>As for current events, well, Newton helped pioneer the whole scientific analysis of nature, a slow starting process that lead us to where we are now scientifically and which played a big part in the science versus religion debate that's still brewing. </p>
<p>Einstein? Almost all modern technology is based on the quantum mechanics he pioneered, TVs, computers, lasers, nearly everything these days. He opened the door. And Relativity, at least in the form of nuclear weapons had a profound effect on politics and society during the last half of the last century. </p>
<p>Hard to quantify, huh.</p>
<p>Newtons greater physicist.
However in terms of human, Einstein is better.</p>
<p>uhh Strick11.</p>
<p>Einstein was against Quantum mechanics. In fact he would debate about the flaws of quantum mechanics with Shrodinger (excuse my spelling mistakes) and Shrodinger used to correct him everytime.</p>
<p>His Nobel prize was based on his research with photons. (I forget the exact details)</p>
<p>Newton was not only a physicist; he was a philosophy and a mathematician. His work holds true of physics of everyday. While Einstein did make major leaps in more abstract physics, there are contemporary physicists who see innate difficulties in Einstein's work. For example, physicists are now rederiving general relativity without the boundary that the speed of light is the fastest any particle can go in any frame of inertia (as there is evidence of light speeding faster than ~3.8*10^8 m/s--there is are a couple of articles on wikipedia about it).</p>
<p>All in all, I respect Newton more, because of the magnitude of the work he has done. However, I think Einstein, despite for bumps in his life, turned out to be the better physicist, even though Newton was more inventive and original. I believe there were contemporaries of Einstein who published models similiar to Einstein's before Einstein ever published his work. Despite this, Einstein established a model that explains so much more of our universe than Newton's could ever dream to.</p>
<p>"uhh Strick11.</p>
<p>Einstein was against Quantum mechanics. In fact he would debate about the flaws of quantum mechanics with Shrodinger (excuse my spelling mistakes) and Shrodinger used to correct him everytime.</p>
<p>His Nobel prize was based on his research with photons. (I forget the exact details)"</p>
<p>Which is what I said, tlqkf2002, he thought it was wrong. His Nobel Prize was for his explanation of the photoelectric effect (see my earlier post).</p>
<p>joshjmgs, I wasn't aware that anyone beat Einstein to the punch any of his theories. I do know that his most profound work was really a synthesis in which he explained the work of several other physicsts in a radically new theory with completely unforeseen implications. </p>
<p>What other people saw as unconnected, odd results, he fused into a remarkable idea that had predictive power and still holds up strongly in most experiments.</p>
<p>Einstein's Nobel Prize was for the photoelectric effect.</p>
<p>Well you can't blame Einstein for not coming up with a unified theory, we still don't have it today, and I really don't think the string thoery is anywhere near complete. I would say Richard Feynman was the best of all time, espcially with the personality he had, simply amazing. It's really hard to compare because you wonder what newton could do today, when so much has already been discovered. But if you have ever studied quantum electrodynamics you realize how amazing feynman is. </p>
<p>The best thing about him is that he had a passion he loved to share, he wanted everyone to love physics, and he actuallly wanted to teach undergrads not just people who were getting a PhD. This was the reason he denied the offer to work with Einstien at princeton -- they only wanted him to do study not teach. </p>
<p>Couple this with the Feynman diagrams -- without them we wouldn't have the string theory -- and its easy to see why he is, overall, the best.</p>
<p>Einstein's research into photons did not impact quantum mechanics <em>that</em> much. I believe the photelectric effect only helped establish wave-particle duality of light, but by no means did this new theory lead to way for quantum mechanics.</p>
<p>To clairfy, Einstein was not "against" quantum mechanics. He simply would not accept the theory fully. After two years of bickering between physicists, Einstein accepted the theory. After someone with a French name mathematically proved quantum mechanics, how could Einstein still repudiate such a theory?</p>
<p>This is a tough decision to make.</p>
<p>Newton did lay the frame work for physics and much of the sciences to come, but Einstein on the other hand, like everyone said, did father Quantum mechanics (which could give way to quantum computers), but like Strick11 and tiqkf2002 said Einstein was entirely against Quantum mechanics, hence his famous quote "God does not play dice."
With that I say Newton is the greater of the two, because if Einstein would have accepted Quantum mechanics he could have been so much more.</p>