I came across an interesting comment/question posed in the "Humans In Science" blog, which I've reproduced below. I thought it might be interesting to see peoples' reactions.

 

Influential scientists

 

When my mom’s cousin’s husband saw me recently, he mentioned how he was positively in love with Lisa Randall, physicist extraordinaire, on the basis of a complimentary article that had appeared about her in the Guardian.

 

What makes me smile is that this article styles her as “one of the most influential living scientists.” Well, that’s debatable, isn’t it? She seems like a fantastic person and brilliant and all that, but can I entice y’all out of the lurker’s woodwork to cite some of your “most influential living scientists"? (Besides, what does that word influential mean? Influencing whom? Colleagues in the field? Lay people?)

 

Here’s a few of mine (in biology): Rita Levi-Montalcini. Doug Melton. Bob Horvitz. Jim Watson.

Also, there’s definitely some national bias; in France, it would be Axel Kahn for sure.

 

If it’s influencing me, personally, as well as scores of other young women, let me cite Nicole Le Douarin, Jane Barker and Barbara Beltz.

 

To comment, the blog can be found here: http://humans.scienceboard.net/archives/2005/08/18/65/#comments

probably watson if your talking about life sciences, but everyone knows that crick was the mastermind behind all the experiments.

 

Also everyone seems to forget about all the bioinformaticians out there, even though a very very large portion of modern biology could've only been possible with their help. *Cough* NCBI Queries *Cough*

Hawking.....followed by David Bellamy

Something I'd like to add: it also depends on your discipline. Physicists will have different answers than biologists. Personal exposure to different branches of science must be taken into account.

without a doubt Nikola Telsa seems to have influinced our civilization the most with alternating current electricity, and the generators to make it.

He wired the world. which led to everything.