500 Years of Science, Reason & Critical Thinking via the medium of gross over simplification, dodgy demarcation, glaring omission and a very tiny font.The map of modern science was created to celebrate the achievements of the scientific method through the age of reason, the enlightenment and modernity.
Despite many of the scientific disciplines mapped having more ancient origins, I have restricted the map to modern science starting from the 16th century scientific revolution.
The map primarily includes modern scientists who have made significant advances to our understanding of the world, however I have also included many present day scientists who fuel a passion for, and advances in, science through communication and science popularisation.
Click the image below to open Version 2.1 of my html Science Map, you will then be able to pan around the map and click on the scientists for more information.
Postscript (4th Sept 2010):
As I mentioned in the comments field myself, many thanks for all the comments and suggestions for improvements.
I must confess it is a little perverse that a jumped up IT consultant should wield the casting vote on which scientists get on my map. So whilst I have endeavoured to make it the best and most relevant list I can, it is still however my personal, and admittedly rather arbitrary selection.
I have now up issued the map to version 1.0 as I am now reasonably confident I have included most of the key scientists of this period. I do however accept that I could make further improvements. For example I'm considering splitting computing from mathematics and I have had some sensible suggestion for reorganising and splitting the chemistry and micro-biology lines.
In the mean time, thanks for all the comments, tweets and links, and if you could link back to this original post rather than just posting a static snapshot that will go out of date, that would be most appreciated.
Thanks
Crispian
Who are Marire Curire and Piere Curire? Did you mean Marie Curie and Pierre Curie
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the entries seem to be due to contribution to their respective fields up until modernity where it seems to switch to popularisers of science.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant! When you've finished it and it's been peer reviewed The Guardian must do a wallchart of it so that it gets into every secondary school in the country
ReplyDeleteThis is truly amazing. Crispian has outdone himself!
ReplyDeleteThat is A-mazing. Absolutely.
ReplyDeleteIt would be great to turn it into a website where you could click on the names for further info about them and delve into each person or each field in more depth. Could even be a fantastic teaching tool.
Top work Crispian :)
If you want some nitpicking, if you're following Harry Beck's rules diagonals can only be 45°. This might though make the map unwieldy.
ReplyDeleteI've often wondered why none of the books I've read on the history of science ever included a time-line. Now I know -- it wouldn't fit in the book.
ReplyDeleteThis is excellent. It would be great to see it as an interactive web-site and as a wall chart.
I agree with Anonymous regarding some of the 21st century names.
If you can find room for them could I suggest: John Nash, Sir Andrew Wiles, Augusta Ada Byron and Tommy Flowers for the maths/computing line?
Totally sci-tastic!
ReplyDeleteWhere the hell did you get your data set??!!!!
What tool did you use?
As noted by others most up-to-date names appear at first to be people who have popularised science rather than made major contribution (as far as I know, which is not very far at all).
Have you considered recent nobel prize winners?
Corrections/Amendments
1. spelling Lawrence Kruass
2. How about adding Claude Shannon on the Maths & Computing line next to Abdus Salam?
This one will definitely be purchased as a gift for the school!
Superb!
ReplyDeleteLove the way Alchemy becomes Chemistry and separate branch line for Biochemistry emerges.
Also the Physics line splitting, rejoining; joining with and diverging again from Mathematics.
Makes me want to dig into the context and achievements of some of those people.
Evident geniuses (genii?) occur at the interchanges: Legrange, Laplace, Penrose, Einstein, and of course Newton spanning the most lines!
Needs to be printed out large to be able to properly trace through, and would be thoroughly beautiful with a small paragraph on the main achievements of each name...
Thank you.
Was Claude Shannon there all along?
ReplyDeleteAnd me bugging you to add him?
Please tell me not!
(BTW wouldn't Shannon then Turing be better the other way round?)
Both the blog text and image text say "It therefore builds upon, but fails list".
ReplyDeleteThe "but fails list" makes no sense no me.
Hi - this is fun, but it states copyright belongs to Crispian Jago when the design is clearly an appropriation of the classic TFL/Harry Beck map design, itself a copyrighted image and very carefully licensed. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing.
ReplyDeleteHowever I feel it's my duty to register a protest on behalf of neuroscience. OK you've got Sherrington and Cajal, but it dries up when it comes to the 20th century. Where's Andrew Huxley for example?
Crispian
ReplyDeleteYou are truly a renaissance man. Very impressive indeed.
The only thing that I notice is that physiology'pharmacology/biophysics is a bit thin -what about Andrew Huxley. Bernard Katz, Bert Sakmann begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting and Erwin Neher? (Note to Neuroskeptic -Andrew Huxley spent more time on muscle contraction than neuroscience)
Excellent work, Mr. Jago.
ReplyDeleteCould I put in a plug for some plate tectonics people on your Geology line? Harry Hess, Drummond Matthews, Fred Vine, Lawrence Morley, Robert Deitz.
ReplyDeletegreat job though
P
Very nice... now if you would please add Dr. Horace Wells, who along with William Morton, first discovered the use of Nitrous Oxide as an anesthetic. circa 1840.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the poster. Reached you from BadAstronomy.
ReplyDeleteCould you please let us know how did you get this done besides using lots of talent?
There isn´t spanish men.
ReplyDeleteRamón y Cajal, Nobel Prize,
Ricardo de la Cierva:Autogiro.
Juanelo Turriano
Love it - NB Jean Baptiste Lamark misspelled - should be Lamarck, but don't think I'm complaining!
ReplyDeleteI'm missing Carolyn Porco, who BTW also won the Carl Sagan award for science popularization, a list of people to consider for the map.
ReplyDeleteThat's very nice indeed, Crispian. But I do feel I should give you a heads up. Transport for London are extremely protective of their IP regarding the London Undergound map, logo and typeface. You may want to redesign the logo in the top left to avoid badgering letters from TfL's lawyers.
ReplyDeleteThis is truly amazing. Another possible name to add would be Phillip von Hohenheim (aka Paracelsus).
ReplyDeleteI'm missing Miguel Servet :(
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus
However, excellent job!
There is no mention of Leonardo da Vinci.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it doesn't include any human-scale physics, like fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, condensed matter physics, or materials science (I guess that is part physics and part chemistry).
I second Ramón y Cajal. I'm not Spanish myself, and it doesn't really matter, he is easily one of the most important neuroscientists of all it, if not the most important.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject, you don't include Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, maybe the only people who could compete with Ramón y Cajal for that title.
How are you leaving Carolyn Porco off this list? With all respect to Neil Tyson and Phil Plait, those guys are only astronomers in name...
ReplyDeleteI don't see Ramón y Cajal and Severo Ochoa, Kornberg was a Severo Ochoa's pupil and he is in the map, that's fatal mistake.
ReplyDeleteFirst extrasolar planets were detected by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Mayor & Queloz, 1995, Nature 378, 6555, pp. 355-359)
ReplyDeleteGeoff Marcy was second check litterature
Many thanks to everyone who suggested scientists I should have included.
ReplyDeleteI fully expected that even with all the research I did, I would still miss out important names. I will be reviewing all suggestions and adding in those I believe should be included in the next couple of days. Please keep the suggestions for missing names coming in as I would like to include all of the key scientists of the period.
Thanks for the heads up on the logo, I’ll change that too as I don’t want to piss off TFL. I’ve actually used a different (but similar) font to the official London Underground map so hopefully that’s OK. Oh and I’ll also look at the possibility of making the names into hyperlinks.
Cheers
Crispian
Great job!
ReplyDeleteIf I may nitpick though, it's Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Very cool.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't Lavoisier be on there for his Elements of Chemistry?
For formal math you missed Thomas Bayes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bayes. His theories help support Bayesian filtering for spam. He is from the 1700s so he easily fits into this diagram.
ReplyDeleteI would second @henstridgesj that Ada Byron/Lovelace should definitely get a mention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
ReplyDeleteMornington Crescent!
ReplyDeleteVector format?
ReplyDeleteWould love to print it out in poster format in our lab.
You need to add Gregory Perelman for mathematics! His contribution is perhaps equal to that of Andrew Wiles.
ReplyDeleteI am puzzled by the entry of Stephen Hawkins being a 20th century Theoretical Physicist/Quantum Mechanics and an 18th century Astronomer, can you elaborate me on that?
ReplyDeleteI love the map though...
Bas Burger.
Brilliant map! But if you're going to parody the Underground map, you *have* to use the canonical Underground typeface, which is called Johnston: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_(typeface)
ReplyDeleteActually, it's not just the Underground which uses Johnston: nearly every road sign in England uses it.
Absolutely fantastic! Could you also include dates of discoveries/innovations of note? Furthermore, could a similar chart be made involving the arts?
ReplyDeleteExcellent work! Very creative
ReplyDeleteSmall typo: Robert Millikan (not Mullikan)
I have a problem with the labeling of the physics line as "Theoretical Physics," especially since your list includes a great many people who are not noted as theorists (Faraday, Rutherford, Onnes, Dewar, etc.). "Theoretical Physics" is at most half of the story of Physics generally.
ReplyDeleteAlso, a bunch of misspellings:
Robert Millikan (not Mulliken)
Guglielmo Marconi (not Gugkielmo)
if you're giving people middle names, Arthur Holly Compton usually gets his. I usually see "Bogoliubov" rather than "Bogolyubov," but that's a transliteration issue, and could probably go either way.
Mention of the discoveries that place them on the map would be great. Then I just need a link to order a large poster of it!
ReplyDeleteI was very please to see Franklin. Geology is a little thin however. Please add to the appropiate spot Halabouty (salt domes), Helgeson (geochem), Bowen (igneous rocks) Tuzo Wilson (modern plate tech) Folk and Dunham for sedimentary rock classification. There are probably more giants but that is a start.
ReplyDeleteno neuroscience/psychology line? disappointing.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent piece of work, I'm going to have to get this printed out properly.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations - you've made it to slashdot.org
I second @anonymous. While DaVinci mostly worked in the 15th century, he did span the 16th as well. His studies of the human anatomy were true advances. From wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteAs a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.[6]"
I second the Idea of Ada Byron/Lovelace missing, and would ask for Donald E. Knuth to be included, too.
ReplyDeleteNicely done. Forgive me if I'm taking this too seriously but perhaps Computing is a little underrepresented here? Sure it's essentially applied discrete math / information theory, but a branch might be warranted. You already have Shannon, von Neumann, Turing; I might suggest the likes of Donald Knuth, Edsger Dijkstra, Marvin Minski.
ReplyDeleteNeed I mention I was linked here from ./
Ada Lovelace? Dian Fossey? Jane Goodall? Mary Leakey? While this map is impressive, it's largely made up of men. Where are the women scientists????
ReplyDeletePretty amazing, but looks like its gonna have to be a bit bigger. And how, just how, could you leave off the foremost philosopher of the scientific method, Karl Popper?
ReplyDeleteWhere is Carl Woese? discoverer of the Archaea - if thats not evolutionary biology, dunno what is .. but nice map.
ReplyDeleteDr. Robert Kahn (and Vint Cerf) should certainly be on the science and computing line for creating the internet (above Tim who only created the mosiac web browser at their request)
ReplyDeleteI don't see Georg Cantor on the mathematics line. That's a serious omission.
ReplyDeleteWhat? No Alain Connes? No Michael Gromov? Sir Michael Atiya?
ReplyDeleteThere are some strange choices for the overlaps of mathematics and physics. Einstein, for instance, wasn't pioneering new mathematical methods for the most part, but is chosen to link the math and physics lines. Then Ed Witten, the only physicist ever to win a Fields Medal, isn't connected to the math line.
ReplyDeleteAlso a problem: where's Ken Wilson in modern physics? Renormalization group ended up simultaneously revolutionizing particle physics and condensed matter physics - I can't think of a comparable example in the last 40 years or so, aside from the rise of computational methods.
My problem with your map is that it just doesn't go far enough back in time.
ReplyDeleteWhere are the ancient Greek philosophers? How can you have this map without Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc.?
And, what about the medieval arab mathematicians, notably Al-Khwarizmi, Omar Khayyám, and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūs?
I question some of your paleontology choices. Although I cheer that you included Hennig and Van Valen (I'll have to tell Leigh!), I don't quite understand what enormous changes to the actual fields of science have come from Bakker, Horner or Alvarez. Instead, they each have a few big dino-related discoveries of less actual scientific importance. I am not certain Eldredge deserves to be up there as much as Gould, although Punc-Eq was mostly his idea.
ReplyDeleteAs for who you left out: George Gaylord Simpson, whose Tempo and Mode greatly changed paleontology. He was also Leigh's advisor. You also left out Jim Valentine, Dave Raup and Jack Sepkoski, who were three influential scientists during the birth of paleobiology in the seventies/eighties. You also left out Normal Newell, who was Gould and Eldredge's advisor at Columbia, and was one of the first to note the possibility for mass extinctions in the fossil record.
Where's Donald Knuth? Eric S. Raymond? Or even Steve Wozniak? You have an entire line dedicated to computing and mathematics and you don't have any big names in modern computing(Boole and boolean algebra is beyond important in computing but...)
ReplyDeleteDo the direction of the arrows in the centre make sense if you bother to look up the names around them?
ReplyDeleteI expected them to point from the 15 century to the time line.
Posted this on Bad Astronomy, and had it pointed out that it might be better to post it here:
ReplyDeleteAwww, poor Lamarck, relegated to a dead end stop! And misspelled! He doesn’t deserve either indignity. While he was ultimately wrong about the mechanism, he was an early proponent of the fact of evolution, and he is unfairly tied to the discredited theory that bears his name. As Gould says in one of his excellent essays, there's nothing in Lamarck’s work that indicates that he wouldn’t have discarded his theory in favor of Darwin’s, had he lived that long.
He needs to be restores to his proper place, a pioneer in a field that was in its infancy at the time.
That being said, the whole thing is fantastic!
A noble effort! Can you make it available in SVG? A few typos I noted: Robert Hooke, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (two typos), Alfred Russel Wallace.
ReplyDeleteActually I think he got Mulliken right. I hadn't heard of him but he's not the same as Millikan, and unlike Millikan he was also a chemist, as shown on the map. Perhaps Millikan needs to be added.
ReplyDeleteYou have Galileo who made no real contribution to maths on the maths line but Kepler who did is not on it!
ReplyDeleteEinstein next to Ramanujan? That's kind of weird.
ReplyDeleteLynn Margulis?
ReplyDeleteIf you could make a version available in a vector graphic format, that would be wonderful. I'd love to print a copy.
ReplyDeleteGenial idea! Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I miss Elisabeth S. Vrba (Paleontology-Evolutionary Biology), George Evelin Hutchinson (Natural History) and George Gaylord Simpson (Evolutionary Biology-Paleontology-Natural History). And, of course, in a more patriotic way... Santiago Ramón y Cajal (Neurology) and Severo Ochoa (Genetics-Biochemistry).
I think tha the final chart will be superb... Go for it!
Just a heads up, Woodward, Brown, Barton and Danishefsky cannot be considered biochemists. They are organic chemists.
ReplyDeleteI agree we should get some more fluid dynamicists, solid mechanists, and other "human-scale" scientists. I also agree with Chad that experimental physics plays a crucial role and should be given due credit.
ReplyDeleteSome people I think bear adding
- Michelson. Perhaps even Morley.
- Charles H. Townes, Gordon Gould, and Theodore Maiman. (Because beyond transistors, lasers are probably the biggest technological invention on the 20th century).
- Lars Osanger
- Ilya Prigogine
- Ludwig Prandtl
- Stephen Timoshenko
- Ernst Mach
- Navier and Stokes
- Mitchell Feigenbaum
Ignore the whingers, Sir Crispian!
ReplyDeleteThank you, 'tis a noble work indeed.
I have just printed it in A1 size (841mm x 594mm) and it scrubs up a treat!
No need for SVG format.
Where's Nikola Tesla & Gregory Bateson!!
ReplyDeleteWhere's Nikola Tesla & Gregory Bateson!!
ReplyDeleteI can see Laplace, but cannot find Immanuel Kant - the other half of the Kant-Laplace theory of the solar system.
ReplyDeleteMind you, it is hard searching an image - no text search.
I don't know what tool you used, but if you could make a PDF we might be able to search for particular scientists on the map :)
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff for a rough draft.. this has a lot of potential!
ReplyDelete3 things to consider:
1st) you dont have the progression of the soft sciences sociology, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, ect even though you started with philosophy, n history :-/
2nd) yr dates along with the names would be a big help, and would work well with what you already have.
3rd) names were links to wikipedia? or to other more credible sources... just to get people started on their research, and/or allow the names to be copied and pasted for such research/education?
i see a lot of potential for this resource.
thanks for your efforts and sharing :-D
Brilliant map. Strangely, I came here via the cdesignproponentsists website Uncommon Descent where it has been linked to by none other than the chief IDer Dr Dr William Dembski. I have no idea why he has linked to it, although I wouldn't be surprised if he's a little miffed at his non-inclusion.
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer - I only ever go to UD for, er, research purposes, to report on activities at After the Bar Closes, part of the Panda's Thumb website.
Cheers,
Paul Taylor
Nice one, Crispian.
ReplyDelete1. You're missing Stephen Wolfram (at least, I can't find him on the Maths line) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram)
2. Like some have already said, we'd love a vector copy, particularly once the map has matured. This poster on walls = +++ nerd cred.
3. Just curiosity: that version number... how did you come up with v0.37?
What?!? Not me?!? That is certainly a serious omission!!!
ReplyDeleteMarshall Nirenberg is a pretty damned important figure to be missing from this. Without his work in actually deciphering the genetic code, molecular genetics would be over with Watson and Crick.
ReplyDeleteThe ordering around Watson & Crick is pretty messed up too. I am not sure what your ordering principle is meant to be, but in terms of who influenced or inspired who, and when, it should go more like Wilkins---->Franklin----->Watson---->Crick, while you have almost the opposite of that. (Also, Max Delbruck, Willian and Lawrence Bragg, Max Perutz and Oswald Avery all have a much bettrer claim to be included on that time line than Wilkins does in my opinion.)
Amazing stuff!
ReplyDeleteI would just like to point out a couple of (IMHO) crude omissions from the 20th century physics (& mathematics) lines:
Kenneth G. Wilson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_G._Wilson)
Sidney Coleman
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Coleman)
Gerard 't Hooft
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_'t_Hooft)
Edward Norton Lorenz
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lorenz)
Frank Wilczek
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wilczek)
Yoichiro Nambu
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoichiro_Nambu)
maybe also Savas Dimopoulos
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savas_Dimopoulos)
Finally, instead of Brian Greene, Brian Cox, Jim Al-Khalili, Lawrence Krauss and Lee Smolin pointing to the 21st cenutry physics I would suggest (if you are adventurous) to bet on a few of the 'young guns' e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Dvali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nima_Arkani-Hamed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Maldacena
and definitely connect Physics & Mathematics in Ed Witten!
For Geology:
ReplyDeleteGeorgius Agricola (16th Century), father of the mineralogy.
Charles Lyell
William Smith (first geological map)
For medecine:
Miquel Servet (16th century): discorever of the blood circulation.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal: discoverer of Neurons
Granted that it's a nice high-resolution PNG, that's a space-hungry format. The same image in vector format would probably be much smaller.
ReplyDeleteWOW! What a great map!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to include Maria Sibylla Merian, as a naturalist and scientic illustrator.
Why is everyone saying Ramon y Cajal is missing? He's there (and he was there yesterday), just north of Erasmus Darwin.
ReplyDeleteOther neuroscientists/neurologists of note - starting with the Nobel Prizewinners - include:
Roger W. Sperry
David H. Hubel
Torsten N. Wiesel
Arvid Carlsson
Eric R. Kandel
Julius Axelrod
I do think there should be a "neuroscience" branch, branching off around 1950.
And I'm not just saying that because I'm a neuroscientist...well not entirely.
I love it, extremely well done. Unfortunately your next logical step seems to be to add a hyperlink to every node, good luck !
ReplyDeleteI think you've mixed up your chemists and biochemists! Awesome map, though!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea but you really need to retitle this.
ReplyDelete"Western Science, Reason & Critical Thinking"
would be better as you seem to only be considering Western European scientists and those Western European/American scientists who built upon their work.
Other than that. Great stuff!
You have only one thread for Carl Friedrich Gauss?! He was as diverse in his work in physics and mathematics as anyone possibly since Einstein (or Noether).
ReplyDeleteDonald Knuth and Jim Gray are missing. John Nash, too.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't Swan, Doppler, Thomson, Clausius, Hamilton, Adams, and Newcomb have interchange station dots?
Crispian, where did this list come from in a first place? Is there any Russians for example? I am totally sure and can prove it, that there were very many brilliant science, critical thinking people. For example Mikhail Lomonosov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and if you make some investigation I am sure you can find more.
ReplyDeleteBut for those who is in this subway-map - THANK YOU. Very very cool.
Where are the ancient Greeks?
ReplyDeleteThere is no science without the scientific method which started with them.
Your chart claims to cover: "500 Years of Science, Reason & Critical Thinking." It lists mostly scientists and a few earlier philosophers. It implies, by conspicuous absence of many intellectuals, however, that reason and critical thinking are mostly the purview of scientists. Historians, literary critics, philosophers and even theologians, employ critical thinking and reason. That you may disagree with their assumptions or their subject matter does negate their contributions to knowledge, culture and society. It certainly does not abrogate them as critical thinkers and men and women of reason. I suggest that you more accurately label this chart, perhaps as 500 Years of Scientific Critical Thinkers and Discoverers.
ReplyDeleteI won't comment on content, but for form:
ReplyDelete(1) Why have 21st Century Chemistry and 21st Century Astronomy cross? Take 21st
Century Chemistry down a little and then to the left.
(2) The section in the upper right hand corner, 19th Century, lines for Mathematics & Computing, Theoretical Physics & Quantum Mechanics, and Astronomy & Cosmology have a lot of people in multiple disciplines -- like William Rowan Hamilton, Rudolf Clausius, and so on, or John Couch Adams, but you don't use the "double circle" representation that is used elsewhere (like for Michael Faraday).
(3) Why cross, and then un-cross the lines for 21st Century Physics and 21st Century Mathematics & Computing at Roger Penrose and between Stephen Hawking and Michael Berry -- just run the Mathematics & Computing line to the right of the Physics line.
(4) Should the end label for the red line say "21st Century Physics" or "21st Century Theoretical Physics & Quantum Mechanics"?
(5) Again, why the awkward crossing of 21st Century Evolutionary Biology and 21st Century Genetics by 21st Century Geology & Paleontology -- if you run 21st Century Geology & Paleontology up a bit further before cutting right for the end label, you can go up and over the other two, instead of crossing.
(6) It does seem strange to have a double circle (for one person in two disciplines) that crosses a century boundary. You could have someone that straddled a century, but straddling two centuries (Hawkings) seems unreasonable.
James Hutton, according to Wikipedia was born 1726 and died 1797, so it seems unlikely he contributed to 19th century Chemistry.
Very nice, but you seem to adding to the unfortunate and widespread notion that all of modern physics involves either string theory, high-energy particle physics, and/or cosmology. Let's get some shout outs for condensed matter for once. (I bet you like those transistors...) To be fair, the NYTimes also seems to think this is the case.
ReplyDelete- from one who works with wires, not strings.
Satyendra Nath Bose
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose
gave his name to Boson
Bose-Eisenstein condensate
You have no idea how much I want to buy this as a poster. Spellcheck it and make it happen plz.
ReplyDeletesurely the anthropologist/naturalist and philosopher loren eiseley belongs on here somewhere?
ReplyDeleteVersion 2.0 should includes links to wikipedia for each name?
ReplyDeleteVery fun but obviously totally subjective and not hard core heuristic. Thanks though!
ReplyDeleteWhat about Emelie du Chatelet? Newton had a faulty concept of energy, as proportional to velocity. She did experiments in the eighteenth century showing it to be proportional to the square of velocity.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely amazing. Very good work. I do like it.
ReplyDeleteFirst, outstanding map and idea. I am in awe.
ReplyDeleteSecond, outstanding commenters. Again, awestruck. If I did see a pointless comment, it was so swarmed by the good ones it has left no residue.
Third, the next draft in vector format (or, failing that, PDF) would be a boon for size and likely for search.
Fourth, while I like the Underground Map style, I'm not sure this map lends itself to it. Something along the RAnimate videos would be great but labor intensive. Maybe more along the lines of the tree of life illustration?
Finally, this would easily be among the most awesome things ever if it were ported into a website, especially if it were able to be displayed at varying resolutions (that is, with the major players visible in the big picture and more detail as one zoomed in) and with the ability to follow the paths (possibly the best thing about Google Earth). This would also allow for community editing and possibly an easier path to extending and broadening the map. Sadly my vision far exceeds my capability to achieve it.
Love this so much have been sending the link around to academic chums. Poster? Yes please!
ReplyDeleteHi, in your science map, the physics line includes names like Brian Greene, but NOT names like Gerard t'Hooft and Martinus Veltman. This is a grossly misplaced priority and misrepresentation of the history of modern high energy physics!
ReplyDeleteWhat? No Ilya Prigogine?
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for all the comments and suggestions up to this point.
ReplyDeleteI have spent the evening reading up on all the scientists suggested and while I wont be able to include them all, there are some very embarrassing omissions.
I have whittled the suggestions down to 45 scientists that I really will have to squeeze in.
I Haven't got time to do that tonight, but I'll get it done tomorrow evening and publish an updated map.
I must confess it is a little perverse that a jumped up IT consultant should wield the casting vote on who gets in. So while I endeavour to make it the best and most relevant list I can, it is still however an arbitrary selection.
Once I'm a happy with the final list of scientists I will look at making it available in other formats such as PDF or posters. I'll also explore the possibility of adding hyperlinks.
Thanks to everyone who has linked to this post. I've been quite overwhelmed with the amount of traffic over the last 2 days
Crispian
Great stuff. A suggestion for another ignored area would be plasma physics, best representative I think would be Hannes Alfven (Nobel Prize winner 1970) - a lot of astrophysics and fusion research wouldn't exist without him.
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, I think you miss a trick by allowing astronomy to become 'decoupled' from physics for the whole of the 20th-century - there are, I would say, obvious cross-links at for example Einstein (gravity), Gamow (nucleosynthesis) and Hawking/Thorne/Penrose (black holes). Couldn't you stretch the astronomy line round so that Hawking joined in the correct place, sorting out that weird cross-century link that other's have commented on?
Fantastic. I really enjoyed looking it over. But, did all of medicine really turn into microbiology at the turn of the century?
ReplyDeleteI expanded on your medicine and physiology line at: http://nephrophysiologist.blogspot.com/2010/09/physiology-on-sub-way-map-of-science.html
Cheers,
Michael
Oh, and another thing, quit whining about my lazy connection of Hawking to 18th century astronomy. The next version will include an extended astronomy and cosmology line following physics and allowing me to tidy that up.
ReplyDeleteCrispian
Hey Guys,
ReplyDeleteYou have omitted - from your list of skeptic heroes - Victor J STENGER, who has written eminent (and rigorous) books and papers supporting a secular view point.
May I request that he quickly be added to the list ?
The title says "Modern Science Map". Well it turned out to be "Modern Scientist Map". I was expecting a map of the Scientific concepts. Science is about ideas, concepts and reasoning, not people. Yes, they are important but in terms of science they are incidental.
ReplyDeleteNeat map, but I have to say that 20th century mathematics seems somewhat underrepresented, especially compared to theoretical physics. Off the top of my head, some major figures you might want to consider adding include Henri Cartan (and Elie Cartan in the 19th century), Jean-Pierre Serre, Serge Lang, Pierre Deligne, Stephen Smale, Israel Gelfand, Michael Atiyah or Mikhail Gromov. If you're listing Godel, Tarski also deserves a place on the map.
ReplyDeleteWherever is Benoit Mandelbrot? Surely he deserves a stop on the blue line.
ReplyDeleteFantastic work!
ReplyDeleteIn any case, it could not be in any other way... I miss some people. Particularly, Konrad Lorenz and Desmond Morris, in Natural History I guess (Ethology).
Another vote for Plate Tectonics please!! J Tuzo Wilson perhaps?
ReplyDeleteWell done buddy
ReplyDeleteIt's very nice.
ReplyDeleteBut where is Russell Bertrand on the Mathematics & Computing line. I've thought he was very influence on Godel's work on Incompleteness theorem
Great stuff. I have a suggestion. Split off 21st century Paleontology and Geology at Edward Irving. They're really not the same disciplines. Call the Geology branch 'Earth Science', which can include physical geology, meteorology and climate science (e.g. giants like James Hansen).
ReplyDeleteModern geology deals much more with understanding how the earth works as a system (physical and chemical) and used historical geology (with old ties to paleontology) as examples to test these ideas.
Amazing work. Deserve a good coverage from the media. I will be back when its final. Good job once again.
ReplyDeleteGreat map. May suggest switching Higgs and Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble since that later group worked with Salam at IC London and were on the mechanism and boson work earlier due to work with Schwinger and Gilbert in Cambridge, MA.
ReplyDeleteI am not going to comment on the content. I wantto commend you for finding a way ( even if you borrowed ideas from others) on how to get a really interesting timeline into the hands of stduents.
ReplyDeleteThey get so bored seeing a _________ this is a type of map many urban kids have seen. It reinforces the idea that science and the scientists that populate the field do not and cannot form a straight line. It highlights relationships and lets us think about how people worked off each other.
I am looking forward to the next version.
You might want to consider adding John Vincent Atanasoff to your "Mathematics and Computing" line - he was the inventor of the world's first digital computer. I would think what was basically the world's first calculator would be important to both mathematics and computing.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff
Huge work. Congrats!
ReplyDeleteShould Herb Simon (and Newell) be included on computing given their contribution to AI?
ReplyDeleteProbably makes sense to have Salam and Weinberg together - again they all overlapped with Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble at Imperial College - and learned much from GHK and Kibble at IC on the Higgs. This led to 1979 Nobel.
Great stuff.
In addition to Harry Beck, Simon Patterson deserves a nod here, no?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Bear
misspelling on Joseph-Louis Lagrange
ReplyDeleteSuch a lovley image, very much in the spirit of Information is beautiful. Glad to have found your blog, great work Crispian.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice to see the pertinent discoveries, not the people. Science already has too much ego.
ReplyDeletescience instead of names too much ego already in science
ReplyDeleteOnce you finalie you should make into T-shirts.
ReplyDeleteNice work.
This really made my day :) Good job!
ReplyDeleteNice job. Even Giordano Bruno is there. However, I am missing the natural philosopher that came closest to the truth: Spinoza!
ReplyDeleteJonathan Israel (Cambridge, Oxford and now Princeton) describes why Spinoza must be understood as a more important natural philosopher than Descartes, Leibniz and Newton.
Also Einstein shared this opinion.
Great map, but... where is Sir Patrick Moore?
ReplyDeleteHedy Lamarr, spread spectrum communications:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
Sophie Germain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Germain
I would also argue that women's rights leaders like Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (and a host of others - my list is unfortunately US-centric) were fighting to bring 50% of the population into the wider civic society - essentially doubling the potential human capital to invest into the sciences.
You're missing an awful lot of mathematicians from the 20th century, not even sure how to start.
ReplyDeleteI see how math gets tricky though. For example : Gorenstein and/or Thompson are worth mentioning for the classification of the finite simple groups. Shelah is worth mentioning too, btw.
And I've no idea why your listing Wolfram or Berners-Lee. Babbage is fine, but you should fork off computer science for Berners-Lee. And I'm not sure you could even squeeze Wolfram into computer science.
I'm not sure why you're listing Marcus de Sautoy either. If you want a forward looking name, the obvious choice is Terence Tao
Excellent map!
ReplyDeleteWe printed it out and hang it on the wall in our lab.
However, you should consider adding Robert Burns Woodward (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns_Woodward) between Kenichi Fukui and Glenn T. Seaborg, since his enormous contribution to the modern chemistry. He also got Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.
It's terribly good. I second the need for Terry Tao; even if there was only to be one working mathematician it ought to be him.
ReplyDeleteI also agree maths & computing together quickly gets weird. If you can be bothered, "logic and computing" and "mathematics" as separate lines (with a lot of intersections) would be more natural.
"Just a heads up, Woodward, Brown, Barton and Danishefsky cannot be considered biochemists. They are organic chemists."
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to echo this and other potential revisions..
You almost need to reconsider Chemistry and Biochemistry from where you divide them, maybe split them a little later also?
Dumas: chemistry.
Why does Erlenmeyer come before Kekule when he worked under him? Because he was older? Chemist/Biochemist
Marcellin Berthelot: Chemistry/Biochemistry.
Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz: Chemistry(maybe physics?)
Millikan, why on biochemistry?
Pauling with no overlap to chemistry/physics? He studied with Bohr and Schrodinger.
Herbert Charles Brown, Chemist.
Raymond Davis Jr. was a physcial chemist, overlap with chemistry rather than biochemistry would be more appropriate.
consideration for the placment of Lauterbur on chemistry/physics also... although I can follow your logic here.
Also, no modern crosses between chemistry/biochemistry and computing/mathematics? What about computational chemistry?
To follow up my last long comment... Maybe to make it easier change the label for the biochemistry line to "Organic Chemistry/Biochemistry and Pharmacy" and consider moving fewer of the people and still add some connections to physics.
ReplyDeleteIts still a quite confusing line.
I would argue that this sort of thing is difficult to do "fairly"... that it's difficult to clearly separate direct scientific knowledge contribution versus the popularising/advertising component of important scientific ideas and becoming w...holly associated with their advancement. For example, Darwin (in my non expert opinion) get's the lion's share of the credit for every idea considered central to the "theory of evolution" in fact it's often stated as his (or that he is the "father" of the central themes). Is it just me, or is it weird the the "map" looks like the inheritance of the Y chromosome? I just have unresolved issues with people wanting to do this sort of thing in the first place in this parental sort of way. I think it's a very guy sort of thing to want to trace every major idea, discovery, concept back to a single original source...I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, but honestly it's not so straight forward. My overstatement aside about this being a guy way to organize info, this really could be the reason we don't see a whole lot of women on there even when there is ample documentation that they have contributed to the development of very important scientific understandings, if anything, this should be more webby! :)
ReplyDeleteI've seen Claude Shannon, but what about Harry Nyquist? He's, after all, the basis for Shannon's work, besides having some very useful work on other electrical/electronic engineering aspects.
ReplyDeleteWonderful...thanks.
ReplyDeleteI'm another who'd like to see a psych/neuro line, though. At the very least, Pavlov/Skinner/Hebb/Kandel should be on there somewhere.
May I suggest Marian Rejewski on the mathematics line just before Alan Turing?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski
Rejewski's initial cracking of the Enigma machine is what led to Turing and his colleagues' breakthroughs in WWII.
Hi there,
ReplyDeleteSorry to come late to this but some people you seem to be missing who were important to my chemistry synthesis education. Also prehaps make the separation of organic, inorganic and physical chemistry more obvious. They're very divided subjects.
Synthetic Chemistry:
Ian Flemming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming_(chemist)
Elias James Corey (nobel prize for modern organic synthesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_James_Corey
Barry Sharpless:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Barry_Sharpless
Richard Enerst:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1991/ernst.html
Robert Woodward:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1965/woodward.html
Biochemistry:
Venki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venkatraman_Ramakrishnan
John Walker:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Walker
Couple names for version 1.1. This is very cool.
ReplyDeleteFrank Wilczek for Physics
Herb Simon for computing (AI pioneer)
Wally Gilbert - Physics and Chemistry Intersection. Worked with Swinger and Guralnik/Hagen on initial early mass mechanism broken symmetry work.
If popularisers are going to be included, where's Isaac Asimov?
ReplyDeleteSome forgotten mathematicians
ReplyDeleteLogic
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Logic
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead
Algebra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Artin
Category Theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_Mac_Lane
Algebraic Topology, Homology, Category theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Eilenberg
Algebraic Toplology, Homology
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milnor
Logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bernays
Algebra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wedderburn
Topology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Fr%C3%A9chet
Topology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Kuratowski
Topolgoy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Hausdorff
This is wierd, i didn't see RIEMANN!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann
Serre is important too.. Algebra...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Serre
aaaaaaaaaaa....
ok... there are a lot
maybe i will continue later...
the community is helping... and that's great!
love it, the kind of thing i would love to have on my wall as a print. i look forward to future versions. as a geologist i highly support splitting geology and palaeontology sometime in the early 20th century. i know palaeontology is the sexy branch of the discipline but it often has more ties with evolutionary biology nowadays than with the rest of earth sciences.
ReplyDeletefor a chemical/physical geology centric line i would respectfully submit VM Goldschmidt, 1888-1947, father of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry, an enormously important figure in earth sciences.
-a geochemist
Francis Collins, up there with Craig Venter on the Genetics line.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins_%28geneticist%29
I have a few nominations for a future revision.
ReplyDelete(1) Bruno Buchberger, the inventer of Gröbner bases, whose impact on commutative algebra and algebraic geometry has been substantial.
(2) Nikolai Lobachevksy, who invented non-Euclidean geometry.
(3) Niels Abel and Paolo Ruffini were important forerunners of Galois, and should be included. (At the very least Abel.)
Much appreciated that you included the laser pioneers, to break the near monopoly on particle-high-energy physics on that recent track.
ReplyDeleteA most important area of physics/math/computer science that is omitted is quantum information theory and quantum information technology. Towering figures would be Rolf Landauer ('Information is physical.") and Charles H Bennett (father of quantum cryptography).
ReplyDeleteWerner von Braun?
ReplyDeleteWhere is Kurt Gödel?
ReplyDelete"Gödel está más allá de los matemáticos de primera fila mundial; Gödel es una clase de matemático en sí mismo."
'Gödel is beyond first-rate mathematicians world, Gödel is a math class in itself.'
John von Neumann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del
Could it be possible to make the map draggable, instead of having to scroll? It'd make following the map more intuitive.
ReplyDeleteNeat work though! :)
Brilliant work, Crispian!
ReplyDeleteA few constructive suggestions...
Mikhail Lomonosov should link to astronomy. He discovered the atmosphere of Venus while observing its transit.
Chandrasekhar ditto, as his limit is the maximum mass for a white dwarf.
George Airy should link to physics, as he measured the constant of gravitation.
Some astronomers who really should be included:
John Goodricke - explained the variability of Algol, the first known eclipsing binary.
James Gregory - described the principle of the reflecting telescope before Newton, though he never actually made one.
John Herschel - catalogued the southern sky.
U.J.J. le Verrier ( astronomy and maths ) - predicted the existence of Neptune independently of Adams; le Verrier's calculations were used to find it.
Johann Galle and Heinrich d'Arrest - discovered Neptune.
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessell - first to measure a stellar parallax, and therefore distance.
William Huggins - first to measure a star's radial velocity by spectroscopy.
Annie Jump Cannon - developed system of spectral classifications.
George Ellery Hale - built the world's biggest telescope not just once, but four times! ( Last was Palomar 200-inch, named in his honour. )
Edward Emerson Barnard - possibly the greatest visual observer who ever lived.
Finally, how about Sir Arthur C. Clarke for physics? He invented the principle of the geosynchronous orbit, 12 years before Sputnik 1!
Awesome. Thanks for the hyperlinks. I still can't seem to find David Bohm. I know he has to be in there somewhere.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant work - just wondering, I would've thought Cavendish was more than just chemistry? He did a lot of important stuff in physics as well IIRC
ReplyDeleteYou may already have an opinion on this, but what about Plasma Cosmology (as now recognised by the IEEE?)
ReplyDeleteI see the names of Alfven, Langmuir and arguably Tesla all on the same red line as Hawking in your map. But are you are aware of how these people's work, along with Birkeland, Arp, Peratt, Talbot, Thornhill, Scott, and many others, has gone towards developing the correct theoretical basis in opposition to Hawking et all's standard model? If so, then you would be aware of The Electric Universe. See here: www.thunderbolts.info
I would respectfully suggest that you could think about creating a whole new branch of your map for this. As you might guess, I'm a supporter of the EU theory.
Cheers ...
If you're still taking submissions, I noted that your dark blue line is a little thin on stops between 1900 and 1960. How about Vannevar Bush, who is responsible for the idea of an autoindexing relational database with metadata indexing and searching (see MS WinFS for one attempt of an implementation of his Memex concept)?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous mentioned adding contributors regarding the electric universe and plasma cosmology. I heartily endorse that, as the Standard Model in astronomy & cosmology has largely ignored the possibility of electrodynamics in the fundamental underpinnings of all we observe. I'd nominate putting in Dr. Anthony Peratt, author of the textbook, Physics of the Plasma Universe, Springer, 1992. He was a close associate of Hannes Alfvén, who invented magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)and then warned physicists at his Nobel Address not to use that as-is because plasmas in space behave markedly differently than MHD predicts (still being ignored today!) Maybe a station at Maxwell or so to switch over to electrical astronomy?
ReplyDeleteJ Johnson WA, USA
I'd like to plug Felix d'Herelle, (co-)discoverer of bacteriophages
ReplyDeleteOn the computer science branch, I'd suggest Grace Hopper, who basically invented compilers and came up with the idea of machine-independent programming languages.
ReplyDeleteYou might also consider Alonzo Church, who I would think of together with Gödel and Turing.
I would also second Saunders Mac Lane - category theory has been immensely important in the realm of computer science over the last few decades.
Another suggestion for your excellent map is geochemist Clair Cameron Patterson.
ReplyDeleteHe was the first to accurately determine the age of the Earth (his figure of 4.55By has stood for 50 years).
He successfully campaigned against manufacture and use of lead additives that led to so much environmental pollution.
He's one of the heros of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)
Awesome piece of blogging Crispian.
ReplyDeleteLike everybody else, I'd like to congratulate you for your awesome map, while pointing a few perceived omissions.
ReplyDeleteBut unlike most of the others, my beef is mostly with the early times of the map: IMHO, you cannot forget the contributions of Descartes to philosophy (after all, "cartesian" has all but become synonym with "rational"), and those of Pascal to physics (after all, he as a unit in the IS named after him)--and he was also a philosopher, and an ancestor of computing (he even has a programming language named after him). Even Fermat and Cavalieri could be included as physicists. Also, you need to add Francis Bacon as a natural philosopher.
Nevertheless, I still have some remarks about the later times. For starters, about logic/computing (which should really be an independant branch) in the 20th century: even if Godel and Turing are the most recognizable names, the map should include A. Church and S. C. Kleene, and most surely H. Curry and W. A. Howard (who established the bridge between computing and logic).
Anyway, great work, and thanks for your hard work and patience!
Great map! One comment: make the links open in a new window so you don't have to go back and forth between the map and wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure someone has suggested this already but I just can't bring my self to read all 170 comments..
ReplyDeleteAre you going to have a this available as a print poster? If yes, let me know. I'd love to have one on my wall.
Thanks, k
Love the Map! - noticed at least one Catholic Priest and a Quaker in there - wonder if we're on the right track?
ReplyDeleteJohn Holland would link the blue and green lines ca. 1975 by introducing genetic algorithms
ReplyDeleteSomeone over at Boing Boing has noticed:
ReplyDeletebenkruisdijk • #3 • 3:18 AM Tuesday, Sep 21, 2010 • Reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Bear
Simon Patterson did this first I believe.
Since the map is really a spiral moving outward over the centuries, a visually cleaner approach would be a single long, skinny map from left to right, scroll-style. But the info on it is wonderful, and I'll grant this this version fits a page better than the timeline version. Thanks!
ReplyDeletetoo bad can only be a spiral, but still looks great.
ReplyDeleteThe father of the modern scientific method is not mentioned there? Is it because it should be only Caucasian map?
ReplyDeleteI'd like to propse the inclusion of "Jean-Baptiste Lamarck" in light of discoveries in modern Epigenetics and the supression or expression of genes.
ReplyDeleteYour placing of James Clerk Maxwell seems to be spurious. He was born and worked much earlier than that.
ReplyDeleteLooks nice - but the genetics line - seriously? No Fisher, Bateman, Mullis, Morton, Elston, Haseman, Lander, Green, Stewart, Risch, Kruglyak, Ott, Abecasis, Sham, de Bakker, Cardon ... I could go on for hours (but I won;t). Steve Jones is a great guy, but his contribution to genetics is minimal.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophus_Lie
ReplyDeleteI wonder why you treat science like, say, hollywood cinema or philosophy, just lining up the stars and actors of each branch... I mean: would you consider the list of Presidents an interesting History of America or the list of kings an interesting History of Great Britain? There was a time when History was unterstood as a list of persons and battles: in order to conform to this view, you should at least add a few scientific controversies to your diagram. But nobody wants to hear History explained this way any more! Nowadays it's about resources, cultures, civilisations and evolutions, not about kings and wars... Moreover, the BIG difference between Science and, say, cinema or countries, is that its truths are NOT a matter of persons, but of rational demonstrations that hold true whoever exposes them.
ReplyDeleteSo I strongly suggest that you start a new map with concepts, ideas and proofs at the stations, instead of people.
From previous post..."I wonder why you treat science like, say, hollywood cinema or philosophy, just lining up the stars and actors of each branch... I mean: would you consider the list of Presidents an interesting History of America or the list of kings an interesting History of Great Britain? There was a time when History was unterstood as a list of persons and battles: in order to conform to this view, you should at least add a few scientific controversies to your diagram. But nobody wants to hear History explained this way any more! Nowadays it's about resources, cultures, civilisations and evolutions, not about kings and wars... Moreover, the BIG difference between Science and, say, cinema or countries, is that its truths are NOT a matter of persons, but of rational demonstrations that hold true whoever exposes them.
ReplyDeleteSo I strongly suggest that you start a new map with concepts, ideas and proofs at the stations, instead of people."
>>>>>>>>>>
The map is great. It views history by people. I am sure author recognizes that events are important also - it is just not the focus of this map.
You should create the map with concepts and ideas and then post a link here for folks to review and discuss. Great idea.
Was a beautiful page. Thanks to the designers and managers.
ReplyDeleteI see Marconi, so shouldn't Nikola Tesla be there? Marconi was using Tesla's patents (see US Supreme Court decision on "father of radio"). With a unit of measurement named for him, I think it's apparent that he is worthy of inclusion on your chart!
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%C3%B6ntgen
ReplyDeleteWilhelm Rontgen?
Cary Mullis (sp)?
two omissions i think..
Just some names to add in the physic line:
ReplyDeleteNicola Cabibbo
Makoto Kobayashi
Toshihide Maskawa
Expecially the first one was a great pioneer in CP violation's studies.
Since i'm italian, i would also introduce Giancarlo Wick (the Wick rotation, Wick contraction, Wick's theorem and the Wick product are named after him, and Wick rotation is particularly useful and connects statistical mechanics to quantum mechanics).
Hi
ReplyDeleteBrilliant site and diagram.
How about including Norman Heatley somewhere between Fleming and Florey. He actually did a lot of the legwork and was the ideas man in the initial production of penicillin but he missed out on all the credit!! "Without Fleming, no Chain or Florey; without Florey, no Heatley; without Heatley, no penicillin." [Henry Harris 1998]
Can I add that Henri Lebesgue is another important figure in the math line?
ReplyDeleteHe's the one who defined the modern integration theory (as Measure Theory, along with Emile Borel, but this one player a minor role) from Kolmogorov axiomatized the probability theory... i figured if Kolmogorov is listed then Lebesgue should be in there too, one or two "stations" before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Lebesgue
Also, it might be worth mentioning Kiyoshi Itō who defined integration over brownian movements wich has important applications in mathematical finance, but since that is a bit specialized idk if he fits in the map
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyoshi_It%C5%8D
anyways, awesome work!
Very nice map indeed!
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to plug some names that should be included, in the Math & Computing line.
1) You should definitely mention one or more of the mathematicians working on logic and foundation of math in the start of the 20th century: Russel & Whitehead, Frege, Zermelo, to name a few.
2) L.E.J. Brouwer, founder of intuitionistic logic, certainly deserves a place on the chart.
3) Noam Chomsky for his work on formal languages and the Chomsky hierarchy of classes of languages.
4) John Backus, for inventing BNF, the standard notation for defining computer languages.
Very successful in both content and style sheets. Thanks webmaster and content editor
ReplyDeleteWow, Crispian! This is fantastic. I love it.
ReplyDeleteIf I could make one little suggestion I think Harlow Shapley should be in beside Hubble. I guess if Shapley makes it then Curtis Heber should, too.
Wow! Awesome map. Excited to have recieved a printed copy as a gift. I appreciate the effort that must have gone into the creation of it.
ReplyDeleteSince you seem to be still taking suggestions, the physical chemist in me wants to point out Bohr's model of the atom was quite important to chemistry as was the work of the quantum physicists. Maybe extension of the modern chemistry line would allow some overlap with the physicists.
Kudos for this splendid effort! As a clinical psychologist, I must respectfully point out the omission of psychological science and neuroscientific advances, which dovetail with many of our other scientific efforts.
ReplyDeleteI can make some suggestions if you like.
Robert
Great work. It is little thin on cell biology. This line would start at Robert Hooke (who should be a stop in a few other lines), connect to van Leeuwenhoek (who is there somewhere), go on the Schwann and Schleiden who formulated "Cell Theory" then onto Virchow and Walther Flemming. This line would then link to Hugo de Vries (who is also in there then at the turn of the 20th would head towards Theodor Boveri. Once you are in the 20th century you hit Keith Porter and George Palade, (i.e. the founders of modern Cell Biology) and I would end with Gunter Blobel, Marc Kirschner and Paul Nurse.
ReplyDeleteSome other critical biologists in the genetics lineage that should be in there are Sydney Brenner (who could be linked to the Cell Biology thread but really goes after Watson and Crick), Francois Jacob and Claude Monod.
For Christmas, I gave a framed copy to a relative - who is on this map. It was a big hit. When do T-shirts become available?
ReplyDeleteThis is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog, especially its discussion. 19-1-2011_19_20_6 rubias
ReplyDeleteThank you for this fantastic work, Crispian! You said several months ago that you were planning on publishing this in PDF; I know that there are several comments about it already, but, anyway, are you still going to to that?
ReplyDeleteWrong reference to Alexander Polyakov I guess. Current reference is to Alexander Dmitriyevich Polyakov, a Russian diplomat. I believe you mean Alexander Markovich Polyakov instead.
ReplyDeletehello
ReplyDeleteGreat info.I like all your post.I will keep visiting this blog very often.It is good to see you verbalise from the heart and your clarity on this important subject can be easily observed. Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the entries seem to be due to contribution to their respective fields up until modernity where it seems to switch to popularisers of science.
ReplyDeleteGöğüs küçültme