Thanks to all those who responded with nominations for Great Canadian
Scientists.
About a month ago I posted the following:
I am planning to write a new book called "Great Canadian Scientists."
Please forward your nominations to me: sh…@cs.sfu.ca
The rules are that the person must be a Canadian citizen. They don’t have
to be born in Canada or even live in Canada, but they must have (or have
had, if they are dead) Canadian citizenship while they are/were great
Canadian scientists.
Some obvious names that come to mind are Banting (Insulin), Herzberg (’71
Nobel Prize, chemistry), Polanyi (’86 Nobel prize: chemiluminescence).
I’m not quite sure what should constitute greatness, and there may be a
gray area here. If you have any ideas on criteria for greatness, I would be
pleased to hear them. In any event, please nominate people even if you are
not sure they are great. I would like as big a list as possible.
Please give me a name and email address, phone number or mail address, so
that I can contact the person. If you don’t know any of the above, then
give me their last known whereabouts. Also please give your reason for why
you think the person should be considered a great Canadian scientist.
After I have the list, I will choose about ten of the most interesting ones
and do in-depth biographies of those individuals in the style of Tracy
Kidder’s "Soul of a New Machine." The rest of the great Canadian scientists
will appear in an appedix with one paragraph biographies.
If you have any other ideas about this project, I am interested to hear
them. From time to time I will post the results of the project to
====
Sorry I forgot to say where I would post the results. I will post them to
can.general.
So far, I have received 21 nominations as follows:
First Name Last Name Nominator Famous For
———- ——— —————– ———————-
Sid Altman Kuszewski, John Catalytic RNA (Nobel Chem 90)
Frederick Banting me discovery of insulin (Nobel ’23med)
James R. Bolton Warden, Joseph chemistry?
Brian C. Conway Tellefsen, Karen Electrochemistry
H.S.M. Coxeter Calkin, Neil J. Regular polytopes (math)
Jack Edmonds Snoeyink, Jack Math, computer science, op research
Gerhard Herzberg me Optical spectroscopy (Nobel chem 71)
J. D. Jackson Austern, Matt Electrodynamics
Irving Kaplansky Knighten, Bob Algebra and functional analysis
George S. Kell Kell, Dave Hot water freezing
Michael L. Klein Marchi, Massimo Theoretical Chemistry
K. J. Laidler Tellefsen, Karen Chemical Kinetics
Raymond Lemieux Smith, Earl First synthesized glucose
Edward S. Lowry himself Computer programming
Lawrence Morley Strome, Murray Plate tektonics
Farley Mowat Abbott, John Northern Animal rights?
John Polanyi me chemiluminescensce (Nobel Chem 86)
Anatol Rapoport Lloyd-Jones, David conflict theory, game theory
Bill Tutte Royle, Gordon matroid theory (math)
Ilan Vardi Vardi, Ilan ?
J. Tuzo Wilson Collier, John Continental Drift theory
—————————————————————————-
Very few people talked about what constitutes greatness and this is a major
problem. Some comments were as follows:
From Ron_Macken…@mindlink.bc.ca:
I encourage you to push hard on the criteria for greatness. I would be
concerned about the ongoing self selection process for acclaim. It reminds me
of an article on poetry in a recent Atlantic magazine. Someone suddenly looked
at it and found all kinds of poetry classes, courses, professors, literary
magazines, but stood up and queried that, if all of this apparent interest, why
is there no popular interest in poetry. Why nothing in the regular magazines
like Harpers, etc.
Then the discovery. It is only poetry professionals reading the output
of other poetry professionals in journals financed likely through Canada
Council. The principle becomes almost a select, closed circle of self
adulation, financed by those outside the circle.
The issue with science is similiar. Science has done well convincing
we the taxpayer that we should somehow pay for all of this, and not expect any
particular result that may be helpful to any of us, and not to even be able to
understand what any of them is talking about. The concept of
accoutability, or ten year relevance to the human condition, is therefore put
forward.
From a CyberEncounters event held at NYU I got the following ideas for
greatness:
who’s measuring the greatness? – people who can read & have modems?
greatness in an artist is the artists’ ability to convince others that their
personal vision is reality.
the one with the most money is the best artist.
Although these refer to art and are quite cynical, they may encourage debate.
I hope this posting will get others to nominate more Great Canadian
Scientists, and to discuss what is "great" what is "canadian" and what is
"scientist". Some mathematicians were nominated and maybe this should not be
allowed. No women have been nominated so far.
Please respond to:
sh…@cs.sfu.ca
or
Barry Shell 604-876-5790
4692 Quebec St. Vancouver, B.C. V5V 3M1 Canada
Thanks to all who responded already.
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -
In article <1991Jul4.172610.18…@cs.sfu.ca>, sh…@cs.sfu.ca (Barry Shell) writes:
>Thanks to all those who responded with nominations for Great Canadian
>Scientists.
>About a month ago I posted the following:
>I am planning to write a new book called "Great Canadian Scientists."
>Please forward your nominations to me: sh…@cs.sfu.ca
>The rules are that the person must be a Canadian citizen. They don’t have
>to be born in Canada or even live in Canada, but they must have (or have
>had, if they are dead) Canadian citizenship while they are/were great
>Canadian scientists.
>Some obvious names that come to mind are Banting (Insulin), Herzberg (’71
>Nobel Prize, chemistry), Polanyi (’86 Nobel prize: chemiluminescence).
>I’m not quite sure what should constitute greatness, and there may be a
>gray area here. If you have any ideas on criteria for greatness, I would be
>pleased to hear them. In any event, please nominate people even if you are
>not sure they are great. I would like as big a list as possible.
>Please give me a name and email address, phone number or mail address, so
>that I can contact the person. If you don’t know any of the above, then
>give me their last known whereabouts. Also please give your reason for why
>you think the person should be considered a great Canadian scientist.
>After I have the list, I will choose about ten of the most interesting ones
>and do in-depth biographies of those individuals in the style of Tracy
>Kidder’s "Soul of a New Machine." The rest of the great Canadian scientists
>will appear in an appedix with one paragraph biographies.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE: DO NOT DO IT IN THE STYLE OF TRACY KIDDER’S
_SOUL_OF_A_NEW_MACHINE_. Kidder was FAR too credulous. I’ve used the machines
Kidder was talking about. I’ve used VAXes. According to Kidder’s book, the DG
machines ran rings around VAXes. It ain’t true (except perhaps for some
benchmark tests designed to make the DG machines look good). The operating
system was (or perhaps still is; Caltech got several of the machines free from
DG; it didn’t take us long to decide to get rid of them) an abomination. The
hardware was unreliable. PLEASE try to deal with things more skeptically than
Kidder did.
Note: The opinions expressed in this message concerning NOVA’s (hey, doesn’t
that mean "Won’t go" in Spanish) vs. VAXes are my own, and are based on a fair
amount of experience with both. They do not, however, reflect the opinion of
Caltech (as if Caltech as a whole could ever be considered to have a single
opinion). The Wide Field/Planetary Camera project of the Space Telescope has
never, to the best of my knowledge, ever heard of them (well, at least they did
SOMETHING right, for those of you disappointed with the space telescope).
——————————————————————————–
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: C…@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL
Disclaimer: Hey, I understand VAXes and VMS. That’s what I get paid for. My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below). So
unless what I’m saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don’t hold me or my
organization responsible for it. If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
Henry Taube, a recent Nobel prize winner in chemistry, is a Canadian who happe
ned to do most of his work in the US.
One of Friedman, Kendall, and Taylor; last year’s Nobel recipients in
physics, is a Canadian. Claim to fame : electron-nucleon scattering
experiments establishing the parton structure of hadrons. In other
words, the Nobel committee finally acknowledged quarks.
==============================================================================
Lee Sawyer | Dept of Physics | These opinions are mine.
| Florida State U. |
==============================================================================
In article <91187.093532NU107…@NDSUVM1.BITNET> NU107…@NDSUVM1.BITNET (WILEY LYLE PARKER) writes:
>Henry Taube, a recent Nobel prize winner in chemistry, is a Canadian who happe
>ned to do most of his work in the US.
I can’t imagine how this thread got started, but I’d nominate Geoffrey
Hinton of U. Toronto as a very major scientist. There are a LOT of first-rate canadians in AI.
How about me? I’m Canadian and a scientist. And I like myself too…
Aw, c’mon! Not even for 15 minutes?
Blah!
George
—
George A. Heckman "Relax. Don’t worry.
Dept. of Computer Science Have a homebrew!"
University of Waterloo – Charlie Papazian, "The
Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1 Complete Joy of Home Brewing"
In article <1991Jul8.234516.20…@news.media.mit.edu> min…@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
In article <91187.093532NU107…@NDSUVM1.BITNET> NU107…@NDSUVM1.BITNET (WILEY LYLE PARKER) writes:
>Henry Taube, a recent Nobel prize winner in chemistry, is a Canadian who happe
>ned to do most of his work in the US.
I can’t imagine how this thread got started, but I’d nominate Geoffrey
Hinton of U. Toronto as a very major scientist. There are a LOT of
first-rate canadians in AI.
I am pretty sure that Geoff is from England, although he has been at U.
of T(oronto) now for three or four years.
Since I’m already posting, how about Marshall McCluhan? Can a social
scientist qualify?
—
Stewart M. Clamen Internet: cla…@cs.cmu.edu
School of Computer Science UUCP: uunet!"cla…@cs.cmu.edu"
Carnegie Mellon University Phone: +1 412 268 3620
5000 Forbes Avenue Fax: +1 412 268 1793
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890, USA
In article <1991Jul4.172610.18…@cs.sfu.ca> sh…@cs.sfu.ca (Barry Shell) writes:
> I am planning to write a new book called "Great Canadian Scientists."
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> So far, I have received 21 nominations as follows:
> First Name Last Name Nominator Famous For
> ———- ——— —————– ———————-
> Farley Mowat Abbott, John Northern Animal rights?
This nomination would be uncontroversial if your book were entitled
“Great Canadian Writers”; however it seems to me that the inclusion
of Farley Mowat vitiates your purpose. (Although it might please both
the Canadian content bureaucrats and the animal rights activists—two
groups whose charter does not include an unbiased search for the
truth.) This would be as ridiculous as including Thoreau, whatever
his literary and philosophical contributions, in a list of American
scientists.
Steven Smith
Not wishing to initiate a debate about whether mathematicians should
be included in a list of scientists, you might consider Raoul Bott,
for his fundamental contributions to algebraic topology. I don’t know
what your definition of a Canadian is, but I believe that he emigrated
from Hungary to Canada to the United States. He was educated in Canada.
Well, I didn’t really want to add this, since I thought (based on his
writings) that the guy was a pompous… Well whatever. He did
contribute a lot to our initial understanding of cortical maps on
human brains, so he should probably be in there. I’m talking about
Wilder Penfield for anyone who didn’t recognize my description
Mickey Rowe (r…@pender.ee.upenn.edu)
In article <SMITH.91Jul9082…@sandalphon.harvard.edu> sm…@sandalphon.harvard.edu (Steven Smith) writes:
.
.
.
>This nomination would be uncontroversial if your book were entitled
>“Great Canadian Writers”; however it seems to me that the inclusion
>of Farley Mowat vitiates your purpose. (Although it might please both
>the Canadian content bureaucrats and the animal rights activists—two
>groups whose charter does not include an unbiased search for the
>truth.) This would be as ridiculous as including Thoreau, whatever
>his literary and philosophical contributions, in a list of American
>scientists.
.
.
.
OK, so Thoreau wasn’t much of a naturalist, but
Mowat *does* know some ethology. I don’t under-
stand what he does nowadays, but there was a time
when he was a field biologist. It’s stretching
things to think he was "great" at it.
—
Cameron Laird +1 713-579-4613
c…@lgc.com (cl%lgc….@uunet.uu.net) +1 713-996-8546
In article <45…@netnews.upenn.edu> r…@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe) writes:
>contribute a lot to our initial understanding of cortical maps on
>human brains, so he should probably be in there. I’m talking about
>Wilder Penfield for anyone who didn’t recognize my description
But he also contributed to a lot of misunderstanding.
Not exactly above reproach in experimental method.
I mean, taking subjective reports at face value???
Doug
—
Doug Merritt d…@netcom.com (apple!netcom!doug)
-or- sun.com!jfrank!doug -or- d…@eris.berkeley.edu
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow