Who Is My Favorite Physicist?

As I’ve mentioned in prior posts (here, here, and here) I’ve come to enjoy a handful of webcomics. I know, my last post was about a webcomic. And yes I know the webcomic I’m referring to below is over a month old, but I’ve been meaning to write about this since I first read it … a month ago.  This one comes from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

When we think of great physicists we often jump to those that are in the media, not necessarily those that have made important contributions to science. (Honestly have you heard of Bardeen before? Have you even forgotten that he was the first physicist featured in this comic?) Richard Feynman is one of those few that did both. Besides being an absolutely great physicist, Feynman is known for his many antics, including his safe picking, playing the drums, and yes, womanizing. Hey, times were different then. If you haven’t read a Feynman autobiography (such as Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! or What Do You Care What Other People Think?) then I would highly recommend doing so. He was a treat.

Besides the point of this SMBC comic, it also reminds me of a funny story from graduate school. At Montana State all incoming physics graduate students are required to take a seminar on effective teaching practices. During one of the early meetings—maybe even the first one, I can’t remember—we had to go around the room and tell who our favorite physicist was and why. Of course, as someone interested in relativity, I greatly admired Einstein even though at the time I knew very little about him personally.

So here we are going around the room and one of my colleagues mentions that she use to admire Einstein until she read a biography on Al. I guess the biography described how Einstein was so into his work that he often neglected his family to the point where it could be describe that he was emotionally abusive. (I’ve since heard many of the same stories myself.)

It finally came my time to announce my favorite physicist, but how was I to respond after hearing some of the horrors of Einstein’s personal life? I said the only thing that came to mind, “I was a fan of Einstein until a minute ago, but I guess Oppenheimer is now my new favorite physicist.”

The irony of this story is that Oppenheimer was also self-absorbed with his research. He was so focused on his work at times that it’s said that he didn’t even know what was happening in the world around him. This was especially true in his early years. Later in life Oppenheimer did become interested in politics, especially after the Manhattan Project. But it was also later in life he had his own affair.

This brings us to today. Having now learned a bit about some of the great physicist of history I haven’t found one that I would say is my favorite. Maybe if I could take Einstein’s conceptual understanding of physics, along with Feynman’s curiosity and love of life, and couple it with Oppenheimer’s organizational skills and insight, then we would have a mega-cool physicists in my mind. That’s a cop-out. I think I’ll go with Galileo.