[Misc] Who are the true British geniuses? (and it's not 'genii' - I checked)

[Bry Nylon]

George Orwell

Great nomination

 

[Super Steve Earle]

Brian Harold May - Musician, Singer and Founder Member of Queen, Astronomer, Stereo Photographer, Collector and Obsessive, Wildlife Campaigner, Author, Greatest Guitarist of all time according to Total Guitar Magazine 2020.

 

[Knocky's Nose]

Brian Harold May - Musician, Singer and Founder Member of Queen, Astronomer, Stereo Photographer, Collector and Obsessive, Wildlife Campaigner, Author, Greatest Guitarist of all time according to Total Guitar Magazine 2020.

Anyone who has rattled the teeth of the woman who sang "Anyone can fall in Love" to the EastEnders theme tune automatically denounces themselves as a genius.

 

[clapham_gull]

I'd nominate Charles Babbage, seen by many as the father of the computer, the device that dominates our everyday lives.

Second nomination would be also be for Darwin who put a massive spanner in the religious doctrines that had dominated thinking for eons. Possibly not the start but most definitely the sledgehammer that started to put science ahead of myths!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Charles Babbage isn't. Sorry, that's like describing Baird as the inventor of the television.

 

[Gwylan]

I'd nominate Charles Babbage, seen by many as the father of the computer, the device that dominates our everyday lives.

This list is a bit male heavy so add Ada Lovelace to the list. Perhaps the first programmer and to add another woman, Rosalind Franklin who did so much work on DNA but died before she was properly recognised.

If we're having Turing and Boole, I'd like to add Thomas Bayes, who did so much for statistics.

I'd also nominate a couple of oddballs. One was a local boy, Gideon Mantell, who was the father of paleontology and also William Smith who created the first geological map of the Britain. What these two had in common was that they were shunned by the scientific establishment at the time,

Talking of shunning, I'd finally nominate another local boy (sort of) ,Thomas Paine who managed to get up the noses of everyone but played a part in both the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.

If we had a league table, I'd still place Newton on top. He dominated science for more than 200 years

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

Isaac Newton - boy that lad knew his stuff ...
Michael Faraday - if he gave us electricity, we owe him everything
Stephen Hawking - a brain the size of a small planet, and he was able to measure whether it was getting closer or moving away ...
Barnes Wallace - a bomb that bounces, you say?
RJ Mitchell - designed an aircraft that made a difference.
Charles Darwin - now he really did know about the birds and the bees
James Brindley, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford all did some truly awesome civil engineering during the industrial revolution - made in Britain
Robert Stephenson made a rocket that went like a train

Britain when it was great ....

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Barnes Wallis .... he invented more than a bouncing bomb.

 

[Eeyore]

Adam Smith - economist

Oooh, worthy of its own thread !

 

[Petunia]

Anyone who has rattled the teeth of the woman who sang "Anyone can fall in Love" to the EastEnders theme tune automatically denounces themselves as a genius.

Carefully wipes tea from the keyboard.......

 

[Norman Potting]

John Cleese and Spike Milligan.

 

[Live by the sea]

All the people involved in developing the coronavirus vaccine .

 

[Barnet Seagull]

Elgar

Enigma variations in particular are mind blowing

 

[Lethargic]

Uuggg, inventor of the wheel , lived just outside Bishops Stortford.

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[boik]

As mentioned on the Turing thread, I consider Tommy Flowers to be a true computing genius. Designed and built the world's first electronic programmable computer during the war. Even paid for a lot of it himself. After the war he was given £1000 for his efforts which was less than he had put in. Even so he shared it with his team. He applied for a loan from the bank of England to build computers but was denied because "it would never work". Because he had signed the official secrets act he couldn't tell them he had already built one!

 

[Frutos]

Stephen Hawking

 

[Guinness Boy]

Stephen Hawking

Curse you Frutos! I was just about to correct this glaring omission when someone finally beat me to it

Of those already mentioned, Shakespeare and Turing for sure.

I'd like to throw Archibald Leitch into the mix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Leitch

Sure, the view from the away end at Everton is a bit shit but, if we're going to consider Wren, then we may as well size up the man who has built some "cathedrals" that should be even closer to our hearts.

 

[Pevenseagull]

All the people involved in developing the coronavirus vaccine .

Starting with Edward Jenner

 

[zefarelly]

Keith Duckworth
Colin Chapman
Gordon Murray (really nice guy too)
Mike Costin

Peter Cook

 

[SweatyMexican]

Lots of great and good people. What about evil geniuses? We must have a few.

 

[Deportivo Seagull]

Newton, Fleming, Brunel, Maxwell, Shakespeare and Nelson (overhauled naval warfare) to name a few.

However For me it would be Faraday because unlike a great many specie twist already mentioned he had no formal education, yet would go onto dominate the field of electricity and electromagnetism. He also shone in the world of Chemistry and was responsible for the early design of the Bunsen burner. Truly a colossus of British science.


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