I discovered that the US Postal Service released a set of 37-cent stamps honoring four US scientists in May of 2005. (See here for picture, which may be enlarged, and press release, which includes brief biographies of each.)
The four are Richard P. Feynman, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Barbara McClintock and John von Neumann. All four deserve honor. Feynman and McClintock won Nobel prizes. Gibbs was before the Nobel prize era. von Neumann's field was not covered by the Nobels. He did win an Enrico Fermi award.
Other U. S. scientists deserve a stamp, too. Here's my short list:
George Washington Carver (He had a coin made in his honor, also two stamps and a ship.)
Eugene Odum
James D. Watson (his most important discovery was made while he was in the UK)
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Rachel Carson
Linus Pauling
Joseph Henry
Edward Osborne Wilson
Who have I missed? Who is on the list who shouldn't be?
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
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The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
4 comments:
Personally, I would like to see a stamp set which included Dr. Martin LaBar, Dr. Walt Sinnamon, and Dr. James Schmutz. I dont have much experience with the "famous" scientists, but these three probably had the most notable and obvious (to me) impact on my life.
I have to agree with Jason, except I would request that Prof. Rocky Nation be added to that list of notable scientists.
Maybe I could suggest Rosalind Franklin as well. Ok, so she was English, but she did some incredible stuff regarding DNA and was never really recognized for her work. So, I think she deserves a US stamp, even though she's English. Maybe that's against USPS policy...I don't know. :-)
Franklin probably wouldn't be on a US stamp, although I understand that Jack Nicklaus appears on Scottish money now.
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