Question

Who is the best : Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton or Stephen Hawking

Answer 1

I would prefer Stephen Hawking .If u don't check this out http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/physicscolloquiums

Answer 2

It is like asking which language is better English, French or Chinese???
The three greats you have mentioned belonged to different eras, had different amount of accumulated information available and different sets of equipment etc. to work with..

They are all great........no one is better than the other....

Answer 3

Id say Netwon would win in a fight. He strikes me as being quite the dirty fighter.

Answer 4

they can't be compared. Everyone was great in their own way

Answer 5

Haven't u seen Hawking's lectures

Answer 6

You cant say that hawking or Issac or Einstein is great because they did there own discoveries.
based on me I say every one is equal because they have done done there own discoveries

Answer 7

Personally, I think Stephen Hawking is over-rated, especially in comparison with Einstein or Newton. Often Hawking is compared with the other two, but if you ask the general public on the street what he is famous for, you would be hard pressed to find a good or correct answer.

It may sound callous, but I think Hawking's illness contributes to his public perception of being one of the greatest scientists. Certainly and undeniably, he has a great mind to be able to continue theoretical physics after his illness progressed to the current stage, but I don't think he can be compared with those such as newton or Einstein who revolutionised how we look at and understand the universe. If i am honest though, I think even Einstein suffers from an over inflated public reputation, despite his contributions to physics.

Answer 8

I full agree with u

Answer 9

I totally have to agree with Jonny on this one. Hawking, though a good scientist and a brilliant mind has not had the impact that Einstein and Newton have had in Physics. Yes, they all Three contributed greatly to the field but fundamentally, you can solve or approximate most problems using Newtonian or Einsteinian Logic and processes. In my opinion I can't consider Hawking to be on Paar with either Newton or Einstein.

Despite my afinity for Einstein's work, I can nothonestly say that a prefer either of the two, but I can definitely say both can be considered amongst the best physcist!

Answer 10

I would say Einstein ! He was the 1st to show a proper unifying theory !! If he had unified Gravity and Light he would have been THE BEST FOREVER !!!

Answer 11

@ Abichu,

Perhaps I am missing something, but what did Einstein unify? His theory of relativity (which he is most famous for), is just a re-expression of gravity and motion with respect to the absolute speed of light in any frame of reference. He did some other great work that is often forgot about or overshadowed by his relativity, such as his paper on Brownian Motion, and his explanation for the photoelectric effect (for which he won the Nobel Prize), which contributed to the understanding of the then developing quantum mechanics.

As far as I am aware, the first to create a proper unified theory was Maxwell, who was able to construct a framework for unifying observed electric and magnetic phenomena into a complete theory of Electromagnetism.

Answer 12

And you can't fully attribute Einstein's GR solely to him. The idea that light could be bent slowed down and scattered by a massive object was first proposed by Newton myself, in his Opticks, in which he states " Do not Bodies act upon light at a distance, and by their actions bend its rays; is not this action strongest at the least distance?" and the Einstein Deflection Angle was found Johann Georg von Soldner in 180. Yes, there is a factor of two missing but considering that the Newtonian perpesctive considers light as a ray of particles and does not include the rest mass of the photon, and just assumes that light has a small mass compared to the interacting object. however, this is the EXACT result Einstein himself found in 1915. His factor of two actually results from the idea that not only energy graitates but also momentum so you have to contributing elements rather than one.

But the idea was first Newton's. At Most you can attribute the addition of the rest mass into the problem as fully Einsteinian, but aside from that sorry.

Also, Am I missing something??? What did Einstein Unify?

Answer 13

To further Astronomers comments (which are very interesting, as I was not aware of that), a lot of the ground work for Special Relativity was already in place by the time Einstein came up with the theory. For example, when Maxwell developed Electromagnetism, one of the results was that the Electric \((E)\) and Magnetic \((B)\) fields of light were expressed as the following \[\nabla^{2}\vec{E}=\mu_0\varepsilon_0\frac{\partial^2\vec{E}}{\partial t^2}\]and\[\nabla^{2}\vec{B}=\mu_0\varepsilon_0\frac{\partial^2\vec{B}}{\partial t^2}\] When one compares this with the equation of a general wave traveling at speed \(v\) i.e.\[\nabla^{2}\vec{A}=\frac{1}{v^2}\frac{\partial^2\vec{A}}{\partial t^2}\]we find by inspection that the speed at which EM waves travel is \[v=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\mu_0\varepsilon_0}}\]
Now both \(\mu_0\) and \(\varepsilon_0\) are constants, and hence it tells us that the speed of EM waves are also a constant. What's more, it also tells us that the speed of EM waves will be constant irrespective of position or inertial frame (i.e. the speed of the frame), light would always have the same speed). That is to say, the result told us that light was a wave, but it did not tell us anything about what it was waving with respect to. When this was first formulated in the late 19th century, the premise of the aether was in vogue to explain how light moved (it was believed all waves needed a medium to propagate in), so when the question was asked "what is this speed relative to?", the natural answer of course was it was the speed relative to the aether, which was viewed as an absolute space.

However, thanks to Maxwell, it became apparent that the nature of EM radiation meant that it could propagate without a medium, but it was difficult for people to throw away the Newtonian concepts of an aether. Results of Michelson and Morely showed that there was no aether, but Lorentz reinterpreted their results instead as there being an aether, but that length contraction must occur to explain the results. It was Einstein who took Maxwell's work at face value, as well as Michelson and Morelys results, that there was no aether, as well as Lorentz's contraction ideas, and formulated a coherent and consistent (if some what unintuitive) framework that dispelled the absoluteness of space.

Newtonian thought hampered the development of relativity for many decades, before Einstein came along, but the seeds were most certainly there, that if Einstein hadn't have come up with the theory, some other person or persons would have.

This early on a Sunday morning without coffee, I may have confused a few of the details, so please forgive me if this is the case, and please correct any errors or submissions.