Most Influential Physicist

[CDarwin]

Who would you say to be the most influential physicist alive today? Is it possible to say?

[Fred56]

Don't these things get sorted out, like, posthumously, mostly, or even somewhat?

[foodchain]

Erwin Schrödinger has my vote.

[CDarwin]

Don't these things get sorted out, like, posthumously, mostly, or even somewhat?

 

Well that's less fun.

 

Erwin Schrödinger has my vote.

 

I don't think he's alive.

[the tree]

Erwin Schrödinger has my vote.

I don't think he's alive.

He is. But he's also dead.

 

Yes that's right, I made the joke first. I win science.

[PhDP]

Edward Witten, perhaps...

[Mr Skeptic]

Influential to whom?

[CDarwin]

Influential to whom?

 

Physics... or you. It depends on what you mean by the question.

[SkepticLance]

Gotta be Hawking.

On two levels.

He is the greatest brain.

He is also the guy who has overcome the greatest handicap to become great.

[bascule]

Well, I'd like to say Lee Smolin

 

Hawking's probably a more realistic answer, given how many have read a Brief History of Time...

[Reaper]

Yeah, I would agree w/ Hawking. That or Kaku.

[Mr Skeptic]

Yes, I believe that I would go with Hawking as well. I'm actually not as familiar with living physicists as with the dead famous ones.

[BenTheMan]

Lee Smolin has very little influence over the physics community. As does Hawking, actually. Hawking hasn't contributed much to physics in a long time.

 

For high energy theory, it's probably Witten. Judging by citations, though, it could be Maldacena, who discovered the AdS/CFT correspondence.

 

If it's based on book sales, then definitely Brian Greene, who's book has won many prizes, and still outsells other pop science books after eight years in print.

[PhDP]

I'm also skeptical about Hawking's influence, although it depends what is meant by "most influencial". In terms of modern physics popularization, perhaps, but in terms of inlfuence within the scientific community, I highly doupt it. It's like saying Dawkins had an influence in evolutionary biology, it's true, but mostly over the laypeople.

[Martin]

Who would you say to be the most influential physicist alive today? Is it possible to say?

 

You could make it more interesting if you specified "under the age of 60" or some such.

 

The reason is there are a lot of old Nobel laureates who are influential because of their seniority, prestige, and assumed wisdom.

 

Their current work may not be influential---they may not be having any new ideas or writing important papers---but these old guys have the wisdom of experience and it's worth listening to them for guidance. So they have influence of a certain kind.

 

Working physicists who are still getting important ideas and writing papers that potentially could revolutionize their field have influence of a different kind.

=============

 

Would you like to try to narrow the question?

Say what kind of influence you mean? A or B?

 

A. Wise old heads---Nobel laureates you should listen to?:

Steven Weinberg. Gerard 't Hooft. .....several others, somewhat a matter of taste...

 

B. Current work having impact today. Active revolutionaries at the leading-edge?: is that what you want?

nominations in that category are apt to be more controversial, and you may not have heard some of their names before.

[ajb]

I agree with Ben, Maldacena and Witten and must be the most influential if you look for citations. In fact, I think you will find that Witten has written on just about every topic in HEP and string theory.

 

Albert S. Schwarz is also very influential and he has often made the initial investigations and conjectures that have led to further work by many others. For example, he conjectured that observables in topological field theory could give rise to topological invariants. He was one of the original discoverers of instantons. He has also contributed to supermanifolds, supergravity and the BV-formalism. All important work that has gone on to be developed by many others.

 

As a side note, Schwarz was the PhD supervisor of my PhD supervisor.

[timo]

[x] Angela Merkel

[CDarwin]

Would you like to try to narrow the question?

Say what kind of influence you mean? A or B?

 

A. Wise old heads---Nobel laureates you should listen to?:

Steven Weinberg. Gerard 't Hooft. .....several others, somewhat a matter of taste...

 

B. Current work having impact today. Active revolutionaries at the leading-edge?: is that what you want?

nominations in that category are apt to be more controversial, and you may not have heard some of their names before.

 

I suppose I meant physicists alive today that have had the greatest impact on physics as a science as of the year of our Lord 2007, but any answer you want to give seems like it might be potentially interesting.

 

Ulteriorly, I was curious if anyone would mention Stephen Hawking, as I've heard various places that he's not actually been as terribly influential as his public fame would suggest.

[Royston]

I suppose I meant physicists alive today that have had the greatest impact on physics as a science as of the year of our Lord 2007.

 

That's probably too short a time period to tell, but over the last decade, Witten.

[Klaynos]

It's very field dependent imo...

 

But I'm going to put one forward for solid state physics... Philip Warren Anderson

[CDarwin]

That's probably too short a time period to tell, but over the last decade, Witten.

 

I don't mean in that specific year, I mean all the accomplishments as of that year.

[Martin]

I suppose I meant physicists alive today that have had the greatest impact on physics as a science as of the year of our Lord 2007,...

 

I see. You mean cumulative historical effect over the course of the person's lifetime.

 

That's the sort of thing one expects to be recognized by the physics Nobel.

 

The biggest development in fundamental physics since around 1950 (Feynman etc. QED) is the Standard Model of particle physics (1970-1973).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_model

String theorists and others are still trying to tinker their models so they can simply reproduce the numbers that you get out of the Standard Model. Most of what experimental particle physics since mid-Seventies has been able to do is simply to CONFIRM the SM predictions again and again. The success of SM is even a source of frustration to physicists, who are longing to see something at LHC which is not just more confirmation of SM.

 

So, in a certain sense, particle physics theory has not changed very much since the work of Weinberg and others circa 1970. Their work of 30-40 years ago has stood unmatched and unassailed.

 

Geez, if all you want is important cumulative impact, then in particle physics you say Weinberg. He's Mr. Standard Model. Here's a sample from the Wikipedia article on him:

In 1966, Weinberg left Berkeley and accepted a lecturer position at Harvard. In 1967 he was visiting professor at MIT. It was in that year at MIT that Weinberg proposed his model of unification of nuclear weak forces and electromagnetism[3]. An important feature of this model is the prediction of the existence of another interaction, besides electromagnetic, between leptons, known as neutral current. This proposal is now known as the Standard Model of elementary particle physics and is the highest cited theoretical work ever in high energy physics as of 2007[4]. The Standard Model is the best description of Nature at scales from about a few GeV to about 200 GeV.

 

An analogous figure in condensed matter (solid state) might be Philip Anderson. Hugely cited in that field, as I recall. Klaynos mentioned him in post #20. Whether you pick Anderson or Weinberg comes down to your sense of relative importance of high energy particle physics and solid state.

 

The competition gets narrowed down pretty quickly to old Nobel laureates, like Anderson and Weinberg.

 

Personally, I'm not sure it is even such an interesting contest. You are asking for the name of someone whose PAST work HAS HAD a big impact, but who is alive now. That doesnt have much relevance to present work and present impact, and it is not indicative of who is especially important to watch and listen to (beyond just general words of wisdom.)

[Royston]

I don't mean in that specific year, I mean all the accomplishments as of that year.

 

Oops , sorry CDarwin...that makes a lot more sense.

[ajb]

Some one else I would like to mention is Sir Michael Atiyah. His work with I.M. Singer of the "index theorem" and also his work on the role of topology in quantum field theory have been of huge importance.

[Martin]

another old guy, and a mathematician to boot.

 

can anyone propose a physicist whose CURRENT work (say in past ten years) is having a big impact on the physics world NOW?

 

or do we have to rely on the verdict of the Nobel committee after it waits several decades to make sure the work has been important?