LoC #64 - Top Fifty-Two Scientists
Welcome to the sixty-fourth List of Crap! In this instalment, we will be counting down our fifty-two favourite scientists. First, a huge thank-you to everyone who voted for this topic, and a big thank-you to everyone who submitted a list. I'd like to apologize to those entries that I don't know well. I've had to copy and paste Wikipedia information for those.
The posting schedule will be 8-5-6-5-8-10-10 due to some ties. Before I begin the list proper, I'd like to share some general topic data and observations. These data include all submissions, not just the final list. Numbers, graphs, and charts seem appropriate, this being a list about scientists.
Total lists received: 16
Unique entries: 175
Average number of lists on which an entry appears: 2.275
Maximum number of lists on which an entry appears: 11
The quick submission of two lists got me all excited that there'd be a huge number of lists by the end. I should not have been so optimistic. While I did get a good number of lists, they mostly came in the latter half of the submission period. With a hundred and seventy-five unique entries, it's not surprising that there wasn't a huge amount of overlap between the lists. Thankfully, there was some and all of the singletons got pushed out of the top fifty.
The split between real and fictional was much closer than I thought it'd be, and also the other way around. I'm very proud of you, board, for picking so many real scientists. Something I hadn't thought of when I suggested the topic was the species of fictional scientists. As it turns out, all sentient beings seem to be curious about the world around them and start down the path of science.
Sadly, the ladies were under-represented in the submissions, but this was not unexpected. It is possible that this is due to the western "dead white guys'" history of science that is usually taught in school. Hopefully, if this list were run again in a hundred years, it would be closer to gender parity. The recent past featured most heavily for the real scientists in the submissions. This is also likely due to the Eurocentric science history that we've learned.
Based on the population of the board, I suppose it's not too surprising that the submissions were heavy with Americans and Europeans. Just as a side note: it was annoyingly difficult to pick a good colour scheme for the map (the darker the blue, the more entries).
The breakdown of fields was very general (eg. someone considered an inventor was classed as an engineer), but showed that the engineers/inventors, physicists, and biologists are favoured. The chemists were not as heavily represented, which was somewhat surprising.
Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply: there are always new worlds to conquer.
Sir Humphry Davy
And now, on to the list!
Topic: LoC #64: Top 52 Scientists (Read 28458 times)
