Who is the world's top chemist and why ?

The answer to this is the same as was told you in your question regarding who the best mathematician is. There are many great chemists who have done many great things over the last few centuries that have made chemistry what it is today. You cannot, however, say that one is better than the other. Firstly this is because the range of sub-disciplines these people fall makes such a comparison analogous to comparing apples and oranges and secondly because it is, at best, a naive thing to lay claim to. I myself am fond of the works of a number of organic chemists, as that is where I specialise, but that's not to say there are not physical or inorganic chemists of equal prowess or 'greatness'.

The answer to this is the same as was told you in your question regarding who the best mathematician is. There are many great chemists who have done many great things over the last few centuries that have made chemistry what it is today. You cannot, however, say that one is better than the other. Firstly this is because the range of sub-disciplines these people fall makes such a comparison analogous to comparing apples and oranges and secondly because it is, at best, a naive thing to lay claim to. I myself am fond of the works of a number of organic chemists, as that is where I specialise, but that's not to say there are not physical or inorganic chemists of equal prowess or 'greatness'.

 

I thought you were the greatest O-chemist of all time!?

I thought you were the greatest O-chemist of all time!?

 

You shouldn't let my prolific posting fool you into thinking that it is a measure of my talent! I do alright though

I think prolific posting might be a reasonable indicator of talent in chemistry.

You shouldn't let my prolific posting fool you into thinking that it is a measure of my talent! I do alright though

In the vein of other organic chemists I know. You probably know enough reagent acronyms to fill up a dictionary.

From the Mathmatics thread where I placed the question which as per SFN rules must stay on Math Topics ,

 

Who is the world's top mathmatician and why ?

 

There are some very good ones, Anyone who would unequivocably name the number 1 or even the top 10 doesn't understand mathematics very well.

 

DrRocket does progress to mention some noted Mathmaticians and areas of applicable interest while reminiscing nostalgically . While thinking the same could be applicable to the Chemical variant of this topic , surely Mississippichem , John Cuthber and hypervalent_iodine can give us a slight insight into their world of guru's , like the Doctor did ?

Honestly, there are just so many. And some of them aren't even chemists, but are instead pesky physicists. I suppose one can't go past the works of Pauling, since he developed the currently accepted theory on chemical bonding. In that line, you could also name every other Chemist/Physicist with a fundamental theory associated to them (Huckel, Aufbau, etc.) Mendelev, who is of course the father of the periodic table. Moving more into organic chemistry, there is Woodward, who in conjunction with Hoffman described a set of rules to predict the outcome of pericyclic reaction, as well as about a thousand other things. Every other chemist with a named reaction that has stood the test of time (Grignard, Diels, Alder, Friedel, Crafts, Grubb, etc.). Someone who I think deserves special mention is Emile Fischer, who worked out the relative stereochemistry of all of the basic monosaccharide units in the 1800's, without NMR or XRD, AND was later found to have correctly denoted their absolute stereochemistry (though that part was pure luck). Honestly, there are too many for me to sit here in name.

 

DrRocket does progress to mention some noted Mathmaticians and areas of applicable interest while reminiscing nostalgically . While thinking the same could be applicable to the Chemical variant of this topic , surely Mississippichem , John Cuthber and hypervalent_iodine can give us a slight insight into their world of guru's , like the Doctor did ?

 

 

 

DrRocket does progress to mention some noted Mathmaticians and areas of applicable interest while reminiscing nostalgically . While thinking the same could be applicable to the Chemical variant of this topic , surely Mississippichem , John Cuthber and hypervalent_iodine can give us a slight insight into their world of guru's , like the Doctor did ?

 

 

Pardon me , does this post look familiar ?

Pardon me , does this post look familiar ?

 

 

 

His signature tells me it's all spam, so I've reported it.

 

His signature tells me it's all spam, so I've reported it.

 

 

Could you elaborate ?

Could you elaborate ?

 

A little off topic, but ok. His signature is a link to some random company, which is a typical spam-bot type thing to do. From reading other posts by this member, it looks like they are copy-pasting other people's replies from the thread to make it look like they're making a relevant contribution, but they've later added ad-spam to their signature. One of the more clever spam-bot tactics, but it's still obvious spam.

 

Anyway, I've reported it, so I assume swansot or someone will be along shortly to clean up.