Who is the smartest person ever?

[felonious thunk]

Just curious to see who we think are the most intelligent people through history.

I'd probably go with Da Vinci or Edison.

[terrya]

1. Einstein, IMO.

Stephen Hawking would be a close second.

Terry

[midnight armadillo]

8. About Hawking...

...the day the guy makes an experimentally verifiable prediction I'll eat my shoe.

[mobuto]

16. Raw, grilled, sauteed, or blackened?

Hawking predicted that black holes would emit radiation in the X-ray to gamma-ray section of the spectrum. Subsequent observation has shown that they do.

Fetcheth the shoe...

[northzax]

30. Tucker?

Tucker Carlson? is that you ol' boy?

[bobthedrummer]

11. Einstein.

n/t

[Kellanved]

2. Newton or Leibniz

Not so sure about the "ever".

[ewagner]

3. Have to agree........n/t

[wtmusic]

10. Newton

Einstein was a sharp cookie too, but Lorentz was going down the same relativistic road.

Newton's ideas were the most original and revolutionary.

[mobuto]

13. Oh?

And Leibniz was going down the same theoretical road that Newton traveled. Of course Newton made contributions in more areas than just about anybody else, but still...

[Caution]

4. me

that shoudl have been obvious by now ;)

[GregorStocks]

38. No, it's me!

I got a 1340 on my SATs at age 12. Trump!

[tkmorris]

43. Johns Hopkins program?

They had me take the SAT at 12 as well. It was never quite clear to me what the point of it was, we moved shortly after I took the test.

[Gman]

5. Bill Clinton

[Drifter]

6. Hello, Frank Zappa

Cheers
Drifter

[midnight armadillo]

7. Edison was more determined than smart

If there were 1000 possible ways to get a widget to work, Edison would try all 1000 even if he could have thought his way to reducing the number of possibilities. This sort of plodding dreary approach works but shows a certain lack of imagination.

His contemporary, Nicola Tesla, was a mad genius who never bothered to patent many of his inventions. He would take those 1000 possibilities and pick out the 2 or 3 that would almost certainly work and move on to other things.

The problem, of course, is what do you mean by 'smart'. How about Plato? The guy invented Western thought. If you mean mathematics, how about Paul Erdos or David Hilbert? Or maybe Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, or Stanislaw Ulam?

[Laughing Mirror]

9. Gore Vidal, in my lifetime

So far.

[mobuto]

12. Johann Sebastian Bach

The greatest mathematical mind in history.

[Loonman]

14. Edward Witten

http://www.mkaku.org/articles/mtheory_superstrings.shtml

[Abaques]

15. Newton or Einstein or Bohr

Newton independently co-invented calculus to mathmatically explain his theories.

Einstein developed a method of viewing the universe that was radically different from anything before it.

Bohr was the primary creator of our modern view of quantum physics, his views on how the atom works were brilliant and went against much of the accepted thought at the time.





Incidently, the people I've named are primarily responsible for the three main ways science has of explaining how the universe works:

Really, really small: Quantum mechanics by Bohr

Alot bigger (our scale): Classical physics by Newton

Really freaking huge: Relativity by Einstein

[judge_smales]

17. There has actually been reasearch on this

The answer they came up with (surprized I haven't seen the name here already) was Isaak Newton.

[Rabrrrrrr]

18. How did you miss al the Newton posts?

They are there, right from the beginning.

[judge_smales]

23. Obviously

Clearly I'm not as smart as 'ol Isaak.

[Rabrrrrrr]

26. Whoops - forgot the smiley in my first post

:-) just teasing, not being critical. :-)

:hi:

[Fleshdancer]

19. Leonardo DaVinci of course

Because his genius was much more "well-rounded" than others.

[DemNoir]

20. The most revolutionary

Darwin, the world still has not come to grips with it.

[JVS]

21. Gauss!

[mac56]

22. Who else?! Mm-hoy...

On edit: credit to "animatedtv.about.com"

[felonious thunk]

33. Professor Frink

Professor Frink
he'll make you laugh
he'll make you think
he likes to run
and then the thing
with the....person.

[mmm]

24. Tesla

many of his inventions were claimed by someone else.
More than anyone, Tesla harnessed nature in the service of man.

[jayfish]

35. 2nd

Other choices for me include Carl Sagan, Steven Hawkings, Kip Thorne and Robert Oppenheimer.

jay

[arwalden]

25. Stephen Hawking

[brainwashed_youth]

27. ME!!

I am the smartest person ever Goddammit!!! Lol...no, I'd probably havta vote for Einstein, Galileo, hell, maybe even Chomsky.

[private_ryan]

28. is this a trick question

to get me to reveal my real name? Nice try guys...

[name not needed]

29. al czervic

[northzax]

31. Athanasius Kircher

or perhaps Augustine of Hippo.

Kircher was a german generalist who dabbled in everything from sankrit, geology, botany, astromony and philosophy. He's often called 'the man who knew everything"

St. Augustine is generally regarded as the last man who actually did know everything. He is considered to have known the entire breadth and depth of scholarship in the world that he knew at the time.

and so I'm not to eurocentric, I will offer up Confucious, Siddhartha and Maimonides.

it is very strange, isn't it, that we associate brilliance with technology? and modern technology at that? no answer on this page is for a person who lived before 1600. strange.

[SnowGoose]

32. George W Bush!

BBBBBFFFFNNNNNCCCCHHHHHKKKKKK - Baaaaahhhaaaaa!!!

Damn! Milk came out of my nose again - when will I learn?
Swallow first, laugh later.

[Exultant Democracy]

34. Ben Franklin

He was by far the best. He was an inventor on par with Da Vinci, but unlike Da Vinci he followed through and built his stuff. He was a scientist on par with Newton and his work with electricity has proved to be a watershed even in the history of science on par with Newton's work on optics and gravity.

In addition to this he also had very practical human genus. He was a master of diplomacy and state craft, and he was a brilliant civil servant. Not to mention that he was a writer every bit as talented as Mark Twain.

[Sandpiper]

36. Euclid, Archimedes, Da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Einstein

[mitchum]

37. Socrates...

because he said that he knew nothing

[geniph]

39. My rather unorthodox pick would be Richard Feynmann

because all the insight and knowledge in the world is of no use if you cannot convey it to others who may lack your cognitive abilities - and Feynmann was a GREAT teacher.

[Rabrrrrrr]

40. I was considering him early as well

A genius, and an incredible teacher.

Had I known then what I know now, I'd have gone to CalTech like I wanted.

[ScholarSeeker]

41. Bill Clinton

[jmowreader]

42. Oskar Heil

Oskar Heil designed the junction field-effect transistor (it's an important device, trust me on this) in the 1930s, 40 years before the technology to make them was available. He invented a tweeter based on the way the ear actually hears. Heil's tweeter has a bottom end of 800 hertz; put one of these in your speaker system and you don't need a midrange driver.

Einstein's work is more important than Heil's in some respects. On the other hand, I spent the morning driving a reach truck whose motors are controlled by junction FETs. Oskar Heil made my morning go a lot faster. That's important too.

[Norbert]

44. Karl Rove

He took an AWOL, alcoholic rube, questionable "C" student and got him appointed president to the greatest superpower, manipulated him to get a war started so he can reap the benefits and got people to unconditionally believe any lies they tell.

You have to admit that took brains to do.

[Cocoa]

45. that lady in Parade magazine

:-)

[One Taste]

46. Me

...or Da Vinci

[cryofan]

47. smartest person is someone anonymous walking around today

There are for more educated people today than at any other time in history, therefore the smartest person is someone alive today, not someone from the past.

Probably either an American or European.

Probably not rich and famous, as being really really smart means that he realizes that life is finite and that strife and struggle are just a waste of time (it would probably be a "he," since males are statistically spread all over spectrum in brain development and structure, whereas females tend to group in center).

My guess is that this person was schooled at home for some portion of his schooling, and he is likely an atheist.

[toddzilla]

48. you are confusing intelligence with knowledge..

"smartness" is ill-defined.

:shrug:

[cryofan]

49. the 2 are inextricably related -eom