alt Hacker NewsI get really tired of Einstein being portrayed as if he’s the greatest scientist who ever lived, when he doesn’t even belong in that conversation. If Einstein never existed, the fields he was in were already moving strongly in the directions of his conclusions. If Maxwell or Newton had never existed, the world today would be quite different.
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Yeah, once you dig into economics, technology and science of the era it often feels like the big discoveries were inevitable. That doesn't make these people any less great, it's just to say there are many more great thinkers that people are forgetting about.
But I'd like more explanation as to why Maxwell or Newton are any less replaceable: all 4 of "Maxwell's equations" have other names attached to them (the exception is Ampere-Maxwell law [1] which Maxwell contributed an important term to), and Newton had a number of contemporaries who were making similar discoveries but are often forgotten.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amp%C3%A8re's_circuital_law
>I get really tired of Einstein being portrayed as if he’s the greatest scientist who ever lived
fair, there's lots of really awesome scientists, many of which not talked about even 1/100th as often as einstein
>when he doesn’t even belong in that conversation.
suddenly, the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction.
Oh boy. I just cannot believe we have reached a point where someone would find it acceptable to have a temper tantrum over Einstein’s fame.
What a depressingly peculiar time to be alive.
Reddit is over that way, my friend. You might find the crowd there more amenable to this nonsense.
Einstein did a lot, he not only published the special and general theories of relativity, he also contributed to quantum physics and was the first to deduce the size of an atom using statistical arguments, essentially proving the existence of atoms.