The Greatest Scientists of All Time is one of the most popular pages on the Make Lists, Not War website. The meta-list of scientists consistently gets more hits than all but four or five other pages on the site. The page also has quite a few comments, more than average. I haven’t updated the meta-list since 2018, so I decided to look for more lists of “best,” “greatest,” “most important,” and “most influential” scientists of all time. I found 10 lists that were published since 2018 and added them to the meta-list. The results are in the links below. There are two lists – each one includes every scientist on three or more of the original source lists. The first meta-list is ranked, that is, the scientists on the most lists are at the top. The second meta-list is chronological: the scientists are listed in order of their date of birth.
Greatest Scientists of All Time – Ranked
Greatest Scientists of All Time – Chronological
The meta-list contains 128 names. There are four new additions: Ada Lovelace, George Washington Carver, Emmy Noether, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Although most of the rankings remain similar after I added 10 new lists to the meta-list, there were some changes. For example, Rosalind Franklin leapfrogged over both James Watson and Francis Crick in the rankings, apparently an acknowledgement that her contribution to the discovery of DNA’s structure was not properly recognized in the past.
The discussions in the comments section have highlighted some perceived problems with the meta-list. For one thing, because I only look at English-language sources, the list may be biased towards English-speaking scientists. Also, there may be a Western, Eurocentric or American bias, which is true for many of the meta-lists on the website. I’m not sure what I can do to counter this tendency, as it originates in the original source lists and then is carried over into the meta-list.
Another issue is the definition of ‘best scientist.’ Most of the lists of “best scientists” I have found also include inventors, engineers, and mathematicians. It rubs some people the wrong way to see names like Thomas Edison and James Watt on the meta-lists, as it doesn’t fit their definition of scientist. Once again, I’m not sure how I can fix this problem (if it is a problem). As a meta-lister, I am largely bound by the way that the original source listers defined their subject.
Another issue that has been raised is that scientists who are more famous or popular in the public eye tend to get on the “best scientist” lists even if they haven’t made many (or any) serious contributions to original research or discovery. I’m thinking of people like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Even Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman’s inclusions have been criticized, even though there is no doubt that both men have done serious work in theoretical physics. I suppose the logic of the listers is that scientists who make science accessible to the general public serve an important role and are influential in the society at large, if not as researchers in their fields.
For me, perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the meta-list is the lack of earth scientists, geologists and paleontologists on the meta-list. It feels like the physicists and astronomers are overrepresented, and the life sciences and especially earth sciences are underrepresented. I don’t know why this has occurred. The only geologist on the meta-list is Alfred Wegener. Alexander von Humboldt, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and Stephen Jay Gould just missed the cutoff, with two votes each. Geologists who are on only one original source list include Georges Cuvier, Louis Agassiz, Mary Anning, Andrew Knoll, Marie Tharp, Luis Alvarez (actually a physicist but best known for his role in paleontology) and Eugene Shoemaker.
Despite all these shortcomings, I still think the meta-list is a useful tool in identifying important and influential scientists. But of course I’d say that.
