JF Ptak Science Books     Post 1610

Here’s an interesting lead sentence I found in 3QuarksDaily via Salon:

  “Karl Marx did not know what we know: he did not know that he was Karl Marx.”

The author suggested that Marx would’ve had a better time in his life had he known what influence he wielded in what he was writing–basically, Karl Marx didn’t know that he was KARL MARX.  It is an interesting–and frightening–idea to think of someone laboring like that laboring (as it were) away in relative obscurity, or at least relative to the monumental influence it would come to have.

The real question is not how many people might be in this category of not knowing who we know them to be, but if everyone is in this category at one point or another, and how long it took for them to understand the lasting significance of their work.  But for right now I’m interested to know what people think of the following ten science personalities, and to answer (in a simple survey), if they knew the significance of their work.

The survey is simple and fairly straightforward, and asks questions regarding Copernicus, Harvey, Galileo, Einstein, Maxwell, Newton, Turing, Darwin, Lucretius and John Von Neumann. 

You’ll have a chance to view the survey results at the end.  Thanks!

Follow this link to the survey.