Well, Tesla was true genius: the kind of mind that perceives past the confines of possible and impossible. However, also like true genius, he was unable to codify or communicate his most interesting discoveries in any significant way. Thus, he is a footnote in history.
Tesla also had the problem in that he was going up against Edison, who was a much better self-promoter than a scientist. Self-promotion tends to win out over technical competance in the public eye.
Einstein articulated a theory that changed the way the world thinks about matter, about time, about space, about motion. It was a relatively simple shift that was due to happen, and Einstein was the first to rigorously "do the math." Nonetheless, this quite legitimately earned for him the status as celebrity scientist.
Well... not entirely. It's true that most of what Einstein wrote on was already moderately well known; some people, like Mach, had already come very close to the basic theory of Relativity. Einstine wasn't the first person to do the math, though, so much as he was the first person to not just throw out all the math the moment he realized that this all meant time wasn't constant. The few others before him that had worked on the concept had decided it was obviously wrong that time ran at different rates, and thus threw out the whole theory. Einstein's main contribution was to persevere beyond that point and see that everything made sense despite that...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that's him, "Weird Al" Yankovic... son of Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King.
-- Bryan Feir
Well, Tesla was true genius: the kind of mind that perceives past the confines of possible and impossible. However, also like true genius, he was unable to codify or communicate his most interesting discoveries in any significant way. Thus, he is a footnote in history.
Tesla also had the problem in that he was going up against Edison, who was a much better self-promoter than a scientist. Self-promotion tends to win out over technical competance in the public eye.
Einstein articulated a theory that changed the way the world thinks about matter, about time, about space, about motion. It was a relatively simple shift that was due to happen, and Einstein was the first to rigorously "do the math." Nonetheless, this quite legitimately earned for him the status as celebrity scientist.
Well... not entirely. It's true that most of what Einstein wrote on was already moderately well known; some people, like Mach, had already come very close to the basic theory of Relativity. Einstine wasn't the first person to do the math, though, so much as he was the first person to not just throw out all the math the moment he realized that this all meant time wasn't constant. The few others before him that had worked on the concept had decided it was obviously wrong that time ran at different rates, and thus threw out the whole theory. Einstein's main contribution was to persevere beyond that point and see that everything made sense despite that...
-- Bryan Feir
I AM the Duke of Chichester!