He might be considered the father of modern science who devised fundamental laws about gravity and motion, but Sir Isaac Newton is not even Britain’s greatest-ever physicist, according to a new ”top 10”.
The number-one slot in the Institute of Physics rundown of British ”physics heroes who changed the world” went to Joseph Swan, the 19th-century creator of the first practical light bulb, the incandescent-filament electric lamp.
The physicists were nominated by local branches of the Institute of Physics, based in part on how their inventions helped improve people’s lives, with a panel of experts compiling the final list.
Also beating Newton was Sir Edward Appleton, who discovered the ionosphere, a layer in the Earth’s upper atmosphere that reflects short-wave radio, allowing global radio communications.
Newton, who weighs in at number three, was born in 1643 and is renowned as one of the greatest scientific geniuses of his or any other age.
The list was compiled to promote so-called ”Einstein Year”, a celebration of physics in Britain next year named after Albert Einstein, perhaps the most celebrated exponent of the science to date.
The complete top-10 rundown is:
1. Joseph Swan
2. Sir Edward Appleton
3. Sir Isaac Newton
4. Michael Faraday: In 1831 he showed how a magnet could induce an electrical current in a wire, the principle behind the electric motor.
5. Paul Dirac: The Anglo-Swiss 20th-century physicist explained the magnetic spin properties of the electron, essential for modern electronics.
6. John Flamsteed: The first Astronomer Royal, who died in 1719, he listed more than 3 000 stars, giving their positions more accurately than ever before.
7. William Robert Grove: In 1839 he created the first fuel cell, which combined hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and water.
8. Sir Ernest Rutherford: While born in New Zealand, he was of Scottish stock and formulated the first explanation of radioactivity while at England’s Manchester University in the early 20th century.
9. John Dalton: Born in 1866, the deviser of Dalton’s Law on the properties of gases under pressure, still used by scuba divers.
10. James Clerk Maxwell: He devised electromagnetic theory, providing the tools that led to such things as radio, television and cellphones.
— Sapa-AFP