Bethany Tanner
Who is the most influential physicist in history?
The world around us is constantly surprising us and inviting us to explore in further depth the universe's
wonderful mysteries. Throughout time there have been many great and famous physicists who have
helped unravel and explain the puzzling parts of our world and who have had a big impact on our
scientific knowledge and understanding. These physicists are all inspirational figures to the young
aspiring physicists of today In this essay I will be discussing three physicists from different periods of
time who between them have influenced many aspects of modern day physics. I will be providing the
rationale to argue who in my opinion is the most influential physicist in history?
Starting off with the Greeks and possibly one of the most influential physicists of his time, there is
Aristotle (384 to 322 BC). Aristotle was a student of Plato and a teacher to Alexander the great. He
initiated a different way of scientific thinking and his expertise stretched much further than being a
physicist, with other great work in areas including music, logic, poetry, theatre, biology and most
famously his philosophical writings. Aristotle’s work can be thought of as encompassing three different
categories, theoretical sciences, practical sciences and scientific method.
Theoretical science includes topics such as natural philosophy and metaphysics. The following is a quote
from Aristotle on metaphysics, “And here we will have the science to study that which is just as that
which is, both in its essence and in the properties which, just as a thing is, it has. The entire
preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and
rest. And to seek for this is to seek for the second kind of principle that from which comes the beginning of
the change”. [1] In metaphysics the aim is to find a link, for example when you drop a ball it moves
towards the earth, what is the link that causes this? In metaphysics these links are identified but not
necessarily fully understood. Aristotle wanted to understand how things worked and not just that they
existed.
Aristotle however experienced conflict when he went against the ideas of his teacher, Plato. Plato
believed that: “the material universe exists only as an inferior imitation of the forms as they exist in the
immaterial world of ideas”. Plato believed that the visible world, the world which is observed by senses,
is not actually real and therefore information that is sensed could not be used as a source of knowledge.
Plato thought this because firstly the things in the real world are always changing and in a constant state
of change (e.g. a river), secondly because any observations made would be subjective (e.g. they would by
people’s prior beliefs and experiences) and thirdly because the observations would never be a perfect
representation (e.g. a drawing would only represent not replicate an object). Plato believed that
knowledge could be best acquired through something intelligible (something we know by thinking not by
observing). He valued the exchange and analysis of opinions between intellectuals and thought that by
using this approach concepts could be fully understood.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed that what can be sensed and what is visible is the real world. Aristotle
departed from Plato’s view by having a high regard for the physical world as a source of information. He
was possibly the first empirical scientist as he believed that concepts could be best understood by means
of experimentation.
I believe that Aristotle’s most important contribution to Physics is the development of empirical scientific
methods which helped improve the process of scientific understanding of many people. His scientific
method known as the Organon is composed of six different writings including the Analytica Priora. The
fundamentals of this method still form the basis of scientific thinking today. The Analytica Priora method
examines two statements and then looks to see if a third coincides with them. When the third statement
agrees, Aristotle called this the logical structure of a syllogism. This method is used today for such things
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as working out how much someone should be paid.
Although I believe that it was good that Aristotle took the revolutionary step to explore the real world
further through observation, perhaps Aristotle was not the most influential physicist in history. Many of
the great discoveries have been made after learning from the mistakes of the previous generations and
Aristotle had very limited work to build upon. However what he did achieve was the development of a
highly organised approach to the development of scientific theories with his methods laying the
foundations for future scientists.
The second physicist I will discuss is Sir Isaac Newton. Newton was an English man from Kensington
who lived from 1643 to 1727. As well as working in physics he was a mathematician, astronomer and
similar to Aristotle, a natural philosopher. He has made many contributions to the working world of
physics defining the foundations of classical mechanics as well as some of his most famous works on the
three laws of motion and universal gravitation. He was even “considered to be the greatest and most
influential scientist who ever lived” [2] by Burt Daniel S and has even been given the name of “father of
modern society’.
Newton was a student at Cambridge but after an outbreak of the plague the university was closed. It was
during this time that Newton started to develop his three laws of motion. He built upon Galileo’s principle
of inertia in the process of coming up with his first law, improving Galileo ideas to produce a more
suitable and correct idea, Newton quotes “If I have seen further than other, it is by standing upon the
shoulders of giants”. The first law states: Bodies move in a straight line with a uniform speed, or remain
stationary, unless a force acts to change their speed or direction. This law provides us with a basic
understanding of force and motion.
His second law of motion builds a connection between the size of a force and the acceleration that force
may produce. Objects with large inertia need more force to accelerate them than light objects. Expressed
algebraically, Newton’s second law can be shown as F=ma so in other words, for constant acceleration,
force per unit of mass is also unchanged. So the same amount of force is needed to move a kilogram
whether it’s part of a big or a small object. Again Newton used the work of Galileo and proves Galileo’s
imaginary experiment of what would hit the ground first if both were dropped at the same time, a cannon
ball or a feather? We know that dues to air resistance the cannon ball would hit the ground first because
the feather would drift slowly down. However if there was no air, they would fall at the same speed. We
have even been able to see this happening when in 1971 the astronauts aboard Apollo 15, drop a feather
and a hammer at the same time while on the surface on the moon and found that they did indeed fall at the
same speed.
Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has and equal and opposite reaction. When a
marksman shoots a gun he feels the force of the gun recoiling against his shoulder, this force is equal to
the original force that pushed the bullet out.
I think that in addition to his work on the three laws of motion his law of gravitation have made an
outstanding contribution to physics. It is said that Newton first thought of the idea of gravity after he saw
an apple fall from a tree. Whether this is true or not, Newton came up with an idea that stretched his
imagination beyond the earth’s boundaries to help work out the laws of gravitation. Newton developed
the idea that objects that fall to the ground must have some sort of accelerating force acting upon them.
Newton used his laws of motion in trying to work out what this accelerating force was that was making
objects fall to the ground. He used the idea of a cannon ball being blasted, the cannon ball will travel a
certain distance before it hits the ground. If the cannon ball is fired more quickly it will travel further.
Newton kept questioning how the speed at which the ball is fired will affect how long it will travel for. So
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what would happen if the cannon ball was fired so quickly that it travelled far enough in a straight line
that the Earth curved beneath it? Newton realised that it would be pulled toward s the Earth by following
a circular orbit. Connecting the links even more, Newton thought about how the moon hung in the sky,
and concluded that his it must be held in an orbiting position around the earth by gravity, otherwise it
would just float off into space.
Newton then went through a process of trying to quantify his predictions. He collaborated with other
physicists and after an exchange of letters with Robert Hooke, Newton looked at the mathematical side of
gravity. He noticed that gravity followed the inverse square law “Every object in the universe attracts
every other object along a line of the centres of the objects, proportional to each object’s mass, and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.”[3] Newton defined the inverse
square law of gravity which explains the orbits of all the planets as described in the three laws of
Johannes Kepler. Newton’s law said that planets travel quicker when they’re closer to the sun because the
sun has a stronger pull of gravity on the planets. However as they get quicker the planet is thrown away
from the sun and gradually slows down. Newton was gradually pulling together all his earlier work and
turning it into one profound theory.
Newton decided that his theory of gravity applied to everything and in the 17th century put all his works
into one book, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, known as Principia. The book was
published in 1687 and made such an impact in science that it is still considered a huge milestone in the
history of physics. Newton’s theory on gravity unravelled a lot of mysteries including the motion of
planets and moons, projectiles and pendulums. The universal law of gravitation has been around for
hundreds of years and still holds the key information of the motion of bodies that is used today.
There is no doubt that Newton was a very influential physicist, however, scientific understanding is
always evolving and the scientists of the 20th century built upon the ideas of their predecessors, notably
Einstein did this with his theory of relativity. Einstein was a German theoretical physicist living from
1879 to 1955, who, like Newton, is also regarded as a father of modern day physics.
Einstein has a lot of notable work and specialised in developing understanding in the area of particle
physics. Einstein is probably most well-known for his mass-energy equivalence formula E=mc2 which has
been called, “the world’s most famous equation”[4], however he won his Nobel prize in 1921 “for his
services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”[5]
Newton’s laws of motion described how most objects move but Einstein took it a step further by showing
that counter intuitive effects (such as an increase in mass or an object aging more slowly) happen when
objects approach the speed of light. In his early career Einstein sought to resolve the limitations of
Newtonian mechanics which he felt could not reconcile the laws of classical mechanics and the
electromagnetic field. To overcome this, Einstein developed his theory of relativity and went on to
develop quantum theory. He is most well-known for the theory of relativity and his work on
mass-energy equivalence (E=mc2), but ironically he was awarded the Nobel prize for his work on the
photo-electric effect as relativity was considered controversial.
There is no doubt that Albert Einstein is one of the greatest physicists of all time and the most influential
physicist of the 20th century , but does that mean he’s the most influential in history? Out of the three
Physicists I have discussed I believe that although Aristotle contributed the most in terms of improving
our scientific method and observations skills, however his theories were limited and this meant he did not
actually make any great discoveries in the area of physics. This therefore rules him out of the most
influential physicist in history. This leaves Newton and Einstein and in my opinion there is one clear
‘father of modern physics’. Before Newton’s time people were fascinated by the movement of the stars
and thought that gods controlled them. Newton then developed his theory of gravity which explained their
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movement perfectly. Although Einstein’s special theory of relativity is revolutionary as it helps us to
understand a new concept of space and time, at ordinary speeds the difference between Einstein’s and
Newton’s laws are negligibly small. Newton’s laws are less complex so despite their limitations are still
used widely today to help us understand many everyday situations from driving a car to hitting a ball. For
this reason, I have come to the conclusion that Sir Isaac Newton is the most influential physicist in
history.
[1]
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 340BC
Burt Daniel S. (2001). The biography book a reader’s guide to nonfiction, fictional and film biographies
of most than 500 of the most fascination individuals of all time.
[2]
[3]
Sir Isaac Newton, 1687
David Bodanis, E=mc2: A biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation (New York: Walker, 2000)
[4]
“The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921” Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 5 October 2008.
Retrieved 6 March 2007.
[5]
Bibliography
Wikipedia.org
Marshallfarrier.com
50 physics ideas you really need to know, Joanne Baker.