[las_cases]

> there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific.

I can guess at least one: Nikola Tesla. May I ask you what other names do you have in mind?

[JoeAltmaier]

Asimov wrote on Newton in particular, as the greatest scientist of all time. All others compete for 2nd place. Optics, Physics, Calculus. Nobody holds a candle to that accomplishment. Also, he invented the doggy door, and milled edges on coins (to discourage filing, a common 18th-century way to steal precious metal)

[jpmattia]

Do you recall if Asimov had anything to say about Newton's disastrous investments?

BTW: I saw Asimov speak way back when I was in high school, circa 1981. He was great in person.

[elberto34]

I can name: hilbert, marcel grossmann, Tullio Levi‑Civita (all at least on-par with Einstein). They all helped develop GR

[tormeh]

Maxwell

and though obvious, Newton is not to be sneezed at.

[titzer]

John Von Neumann, Grace Hopper, Turing. Bernoulli, Euler, Riemann.

[ibebrett]

Why is grace hopper on here? She was brilliant, but the gap between her and euler is immense. There were a ton of brilliant minds, but it doesn't make a ton of sense to throw her in.

[danieldyer]

Don't forget Emmy Noether: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether

"In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger generation of mathematicians."

- Albert Einstein

[ibebrett]

She was brilliant, but lets not go overboard. She's not even the biggest name in the fields of math she contributed to.

[danieldyer]

She's certainly far less well known than many of her contemporaries, but Noether's theorem is an incredibly important tool in theoretical physics, and has been described as "certainly one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics, possibly on a par with the Pythagorean theorem". [1]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether#cite_note-FOOTNOTE...

[stolio]

I don't know what she did for math but Noether's Theorem in physics, that symmetries in nature are connected to conservation laws, is impressive.

No idea how far up the totem pole that puts her.

[ibebrett]

she was involved in commutative algebra. she had a nice little section in my undergrad abstract algebra book. i'm not saying anything negative about her, just that if you are going to list the most brilliant/productive scientists of all time then shes not going to be on the list. she was brilliant of course.

[mafribe]

Exactly what has G. Hopper done that warrants her inclusion in this list?

[benihana]

She's not Einstein, and she's not well known outside of computer scientis. Seems to line up perfectly with ok_craig's comment.

Of course she was brilliant, and influential, but putting her in the same list as Newton or Einstein feels like intellectual hipsterdom.

[mafribe]

She's also not well-known inside computer science. I certainly don't know her. Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, so I am not sure what she has done. It appears that she was part of a team that might have developed one of the early loaders/linkers.

[zem]

ed witten and stephen hawking come to mind as current-day scientists on par with einstein

[cbd1984]

Gauss.

Von Neumann.

Erdős.

Euler.