A photograph of the 29 smartest people in the world

[BaalChatzaf]

Here is a photograph of the 29 smartest people in the world at the time the picture was taken

it is a photograph of the 29 principal  attendees to the 1927  Solvay Conference on physics.   17 of the 29  received Nobel Prizes. In the front row is Madam Curie the only scientist to receive two Nobel awards in different branches of science. Madam Curie, third on the left in the front row looks ten years older than she was.  She was dying of radiation poisoning  and would be dead in 1934.   The total IQ of that group was in excess of 50,000. 

You will notice that Albert Einstein is front and center in the photograph. 

Here are the names:

Back: Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Édouard Herzen, Théophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, JE Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Fowler, Léon Brillouin.

Middle: Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr.

Front: Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugène Guye, CTR Wilson, Owen Richardson.

[Brant Gaede]

I wasn't born yet.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

34 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

I wasn't born yet.

--Brant

Neither was I.  That is 8.5 years before my time. 

[merjet]

You are obviously biased towards physicists. What makes you think there were no non-physicists among the 29 smartest people in the world in 1927?

Even limiting the smartest 29 to physicists, Ernest Rutherford (link) is conspicuously missing. He was still alive then, but maybe did not attend due to health. He was at the first Solvay Conference in 1911 (link). Reportedly Albert Einstein called Rutherford "the second Newton."

10 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The total IQ of that group was in excess of 50,000. 

Your math is amiss by a factor of 10. 50,000/29 = 1724. 5,000 might be ballpark correct.

[BaalChatzaf]

52 minutes ago, merjet said:

You are obviously biased towards physicists. What makes you think there were no non-physicists among the 29 smartest people in the world in 1927?

Even limiting the smartest 29 to physicists, Ernest Rutherford (link) is conspicuously missing. He was still alive then, but maybe did not attend due to health. He was at the first Solvay Conference in 1911 (link). Reportedly Albert Einstein called Rutherford "the second Newton."

Your math is amiss by a factor of 10. 50,000/29 = 1724. 5,000 might be ballpark correct.

 

52 minutes ago, merjet said:

You are obviously biased towards physicists. What makes you think there were no non-physicists among the 29 smartest people in the world in 1927?

Even limiting the smartest 29 to physicists, Ernest Rutherford (link) is conspicuously missing. He was still alive then, but maybe did not attend due to health. He was at the first Solvay Conference in 1911 (link). Reportedly Albert Einstein called Rutherford "the second Newton."

Your math is amiss by a factor of 10. 50,000/29 = 1724. 5,000 might be ballpark correct.

Damn!  Off by a factor of ten.  Sorry about that.  And yes I am biased in favor of physicists talking about that time.  In modern times I would have included  chemists,  geneticists,  software engineers,  mathematicians   but I would have excluded  political scientists,  sociologists,  economists, metaphysicians, ethicists,  theologists  and  real-estate moguls.  I am a mathematics/physical science snob. If it ain't science or some heavily quantitative mathematically rigorous discipline  it is either nonsense or tiddlywinks. 

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, merjet said:

You are obviously biased towards physicists. What makes you think there were no non-physicists among the 29 smartest people in the world in 1927?

Even limiting the smartest 29 to physicists, Ernest Rutherford (link) is conspicuously missing. He was still alive then, but maybe did not attend due to health. He was at the first Solvay Conference in 1911 (link). Reportedly Albert Einstein called Rutherford "the second Newton."

Your math is amiss by a factor of 10. 50,000/29 = 1724. 5,000 might be ballpark correct.

If it's not 172.4 it makes no IQ sense at all. Yeah, it'd be 5000, not 50,000. Anyway, I suspect many of those scientists never took an IQ test, so someone's guestimating.

Even that kind of brain power is common in the sense that many brianiacs don't make themselves into geniuses. Genius is a combination of brains and character and interest and focus. And you have to accomplish something that reflects all that or we don't know you. As far as I can tell, pure math genius is less common than pure scientific genius followed by what we can call Liberal Arts genius. But the first two need mixing up even though I once read Einstein had to turn to another fellow for some important math verification of his Relativity. Not Newton's problem, to say the least, but Isaac wasn't dealing with Einstein's theories. (I wonder if Einstein would have asked Newton for help if he had been around.)

Thx for the info about Rutherford. I didn't know him at all. What he did is staggering. Why don't they teach us kids about these guys in grade school?

--Brant

okay--high school?

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

 

Damn!  Off by a factor of ten.  Sorry about that.  And yes I am biased in favor of physicists talking about that time.  In modern times I would have included  chemists,  geneticists,  software engineers,  mathematicians   but I would have excluded  political scientists,  sociologists,  economists, metaphysicians, ethicists,  theologists  and  real-estate moguls.  I am a mathematics/physical science snob. If it ain't science or some heavily quantitative mathematically rigorous discipline  it is either nonsense or tiddlywinks. 

Or over your head. You're mostly right about what you celebrate and basically--not quantitatively--wrong about what you denigrate--that is, anyone can put out nonsense and call it "philosophy" and the rest listed. There is a lot of refining needed to know what you think you know. The millions of books in our great libraries are mostly not scientific much less mathematical. Do we burn them down?

--Brant

you are aware where your statements about this lay--that scientists are helpless without what you all in one denigrate--that you too live in the world of "nonsense and tiddlywinks" and, let us be frank, language?

[jts]

Combining brains is not as easy as combining muscles.

 

[merjet]

27 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Thx for the info about Rutherford. I didn't know him at all. What he did is staggering.

You're welcome and I agree. Also, 11 of his students or researchers won Nobel Prizes!

I read a biography of Rutherford a few years ago and much enjoyed it. I also visited Rutherford's Den in Christchurch, New Zealand one week ago. Delightful.

I wonder why he didn't receive another Nobel Prize for his discoveries of the nucleus and proton. 

 

[Peter]

Christ Church, New Zealand! That sounds exotic. My Dad who was in the Navy liked the Kiwis more than the Aussies. NZ was his jumping off place to the Antarctic. He thought the Aussies were too touchy, and ready to get into a brawls with the U.S. Navy.   

[BaalChatzaf]

5 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

The millions of books in our great libraries are mostly not scientific much less mathematical. Do we burn them down?

--Brant

 

No. We leave the libraries alone.  People have a right to read and write what they please.

[Brant Gaede]

5 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

No. We leave the libraries alone.  People have a right to read and write what they please.

If we burn 'em they can't read 'em.

Heh, heh.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

7 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

No. We leave the libraries alone.  People have a right to read and write what they please.

Where is this right? Never heard of it before. Did you make it up, er, I mean prove it mathematically?

[BaalChatzaf]

9 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Where is this right? Never heard of it before. Did you make it up, er, I mean prove it mathematically?

I am expressing a judgement and a principle.  I will not participate in book burning or  closing libraries or any such activity. 

And I will to the extent I can oppose any such activity.  

See "Fahrenheit  451" by Ray Bradbury

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I am expressing a judgement and a principle.  I will not participate in book burning or  closing libraries or any such activity. 

And I will to the extent I can oppose any such activity.  

See "Fahrenheit  451" by Ray Bradbury

But isn't this tiddlywink nonsense?

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

35 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

But isn't this tiddlywink nonsense?

--Brant

Yes. It is unfortunate we live in a world where we are forced to play tiddlywinks and indulge in nonsense.   H.G. Wells  imagined a much better world  in "The Shape of Things to Come".   But we do not live in that world.  Alas. 

But soft!  Even world class physicists  set aside  playtime for themselves wherein they fiddle with tiddlywinks  and indulge in nonsense.  It is healthy relaxation if one does not overindulge in it.  Einstein and Neils Bohr  played with tops and rode bikes and sailed boats.  They had fun and they were only a millimeter removed from the conservation of momentum principle.  In fact the main  reason why we are able to have fun is because entropy is increasing. 

[Brant Gaede]

Well, there is nonsense and there is no sense at all nonsense. It's all the same and, frankly, necessary.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

12 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I am expressing a judgement and a principle.

Fine. What principle? -- about what?

The facts on the ground are monolithic publishing, entertainment, and media power concentrated in Jewish hands*, funneled into government school curricula, libraries, and overbearing publicity for two generations. I'd like to burn the whole despicable empire. But put that aside.

Let's return to your assertion of a right to read and write. There is no such right, except in the context of property. And that's the brunt of it. What's been made available in "free" libraries is tripe. Reading tripe is toxic, and writing anything but tripe is unwanted. Evil wins.

_{* not a controversial allegation, simple fact}

[BaalChatzaf]

52 minutes ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Fine. What principle? -- about what?

The facts on the ground are monolithic publishing, entertainment, and media power concentrated in Jewish hands*, funneled into government school curricula, libraries, and overbearing publicity for two generations. I'd like to burn the whole despicable empire. But put that aside.

Let's return to your assertion of a right to read and write. There is no such right, except in the context of property. And that's the brunt of it. What's been made available in "free" libraries is tripe. Reading tripe is toxic, and writing anything but tripe is unwanted. Evil wins.

_{* not a controversial allegation, simple fact}

Principle:  People have a right to read and write anything they please....

This is a bold assertion for which I do not have a shred of proof,  but I hold it anyway.

[Wolf DeVoon]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Principle:  People have a right to read and write anything they please....

This is a bold assertion for which I do not have a shred of proof,  but I hold it anyway.

Exactly. Ayn Rand's impact on the world, zero. All her reading and writing were pointless and, in fact, counterproductive, enabled her enemies. Nor can people "read or write anything they please" without national security clearance, which prohibits sharing information. There are banned books, banned movies, and banned words. More than this, far worse, is monopoly of speech, a mandatory daily dip in politically correct disinformation.

 

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Exactly. Ayn Rand's impact on the world, zero. All her reading and writing were pointless and, in fact, counterproductive, enabled her enemies. Nor can people "read or write anything they please" without national security clearance, which prohibits sharing information. There are banned books, banned movies, and banned words. More than this, far worse, is monopoly of speech, a mandatory daily dip in politically correct disinformation.

Bob champions science and math, albeit counterproductively, and you, a mechanistic politics.

You both declaim negatively on Rand, but she was about a morality centered philosophical system. You both also declaim negatively on philosophy--you mostly through implication--and can't begin to see Rand looking right at her. Hence, "zero."

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

15 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Bob champions science and math, albeit counterproductively, and you, a mechanistic politics.

You both declaim negatively on Rand, but she was about a morality centered philosophical system. You both also declaim negatively on philosophy--you mostly through implication--and can't begin to see Rand looking right at her. Hence, "zero."

--Brant

I must be very stupid, because I didn't understand what you said. I can see Rand, but her influence In the world was zero, culture war lost.

[Brant Gaede]

4 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Fine. What principle? -- about what?

The facts on the ground are monolithic publishing, entertainment, and media power concentrated in Jewish hands*, funneled into government school curricula, libraries, and overbearing publicity for two generations. I'd like to burn the whole despicable empire. But put that aside.

Let's return to your assertion of a right to read and write. There is no such right, except in the context of property. And that's the brunt of it. What's been made available in "free" libraries is tripe. Reading tripe is toxic, and writing anything but tripe is unwanted. Evil wins.

_{* not a controversial allegation, simple fact}

One has the right to do anything except violate rights. If you can't do what you want that doesn't mean you've no right to do it.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

8 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

I must be very stupid, because I didn't understand what you said. I can see Rand, but her influence In the world was zero, culture war lost.

You are hardly stupid. Nor is Bob. As for Rand, you think you see her. Same problem I have. The difference is as time goes by more is revealed--to me. I digest her you reject her. It's too early to say which is best for who or whom generally.

--Brant

life is too short to get our heads around it generally and directly macro effect it philosophically--Rand needs deconstruction and reconstruction or it's all ideological not truthological leaving you with the ideological respecting her, rejecting her and rejecting philosophy even legal philosophy except for the stand alone you created

I use her; you don't

(In a way The Fountainhead is about you; you could be Howard Roark)

[BaalChatzaf]

10 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Bob champions science and math, albeit counterproductively, and you, a mechanistic politics.

You both declaim negatively on Rand, but she was about a morality centered philosophical system. You both also declaim negatively on philosophy--you mostly through implication--and can't begin to see Rand looking right at her. Hence, "zero."

--Brant

Morality is Doxa.