Is there a contemporary Einstein still living?
Please don't say names like Steve Hawking... I seriously dislike the media-driven scientists. Smart people are inately introverted, I believe, and make very poor celebrities.
Robert Ballard
I'm torturing you :-)
"Please don't say names like Steve Hawking... I seriously dislike the media-driven scientists. Smart people are inately introverted, I believe, and make very poor celebrities."
Celebrities make notoriously bad scientists as well.
I'd give Ed Witten my vote as the smartest physicist alive today.
Edward Witten, the Charles Simonyi Professor of Mathematical Physics in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, is one of the world's leading theoretical physicists. Professor Witten is one of the principal authors of string theory, the framework with which physicists have sought to unify quantum mechanics with gravity. String theorists propose that tiny, high-dimensional strings, closed into loops, vibrate to produce the various components of matter. The mathematics describing these strings, many physicists believe, may one day prove to be the key to one of the main puzzles of physics: the relationship of gravity to other known natural forces. In recent years, by means of mysterious new "duality" symmetries, physicists have obtained a much more far-reaching understanding of string theory that has many implications.
Much of Dr. Witten's early work was involved in application of the Standard Model of particle physics. He is the author of many influential papers on quantum chromodynamics, which explains the strong force that binds atomic nuclei together. He has worked increasingly in the area of more speculative unification theories, and has been working on superstring theory since 1984.
"He shows the direction for the rest of us," stated Institute physicist Nathan Seiberg, who collaborated with Witten on a series of groundbreaking papers. "His main strength is that he's powerful in everything. Both in math -- the most sophisticated math -- and physics … he has remarkable physics intuition as well as complete control over the math that is needed. And, in that respect, I think he's unique."
E=MC Hawking
So, was Einstein a poor celebrity or a poor scientist, because he was certainly both.