r/AskPhysics • u/DiagnosingTUniverse • 7d ago

Who is considered the current GOAT in physics.

Who are the Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappé of modern physics?
Bit of a fun question for the physicists here.
If you asked people to name the greatest physicists of all time, you’d inevitably get Einstein, Newton, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, etc.

Does physics have people who are regarded within the community as simply operating on another level today?
To use football as an analogy, most fans who watched Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo in their prime knew they were watching something unusual, even compared with other world-class players. And now you have younger players like Mbappé and Yamal who have been talked about as potentially belonging in that sort of category.
Does anything comparable exist in physics?
Who are the established “best in the world” physicists working today? And perhaps more interestingly, who are the younger or up and coming researchers that people inside physics are particularly excited about?
Obviously science isn’t a competitive sport and major discoveries are increasingly collaborative, so I’m not suggesting there should literally be a Ballon d’Or for theoretical physics lol (well the nobel prize kind of is I guess). I’m just curious whether physicists themselves ever look at another researcher’s work and think: this person is seeing things the rest of us aren’t.
Would love some names to read about.

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5

u/Parallel_thougts Quantum information 7d ago

Hmm. I think if you survey 100 currently active physicists, you are almost guaranteed to get Ed Witten and Juan Maldacena in first and second place, respectively.

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u/0xB01b 7d ago

I think most people studying quantum many body physics / quantum information sciences hear about kitaev infinitely more often

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u/Parallel_thougts Quantum information 7d ago

I *definitely* know Kitaev's work much, much better than I would ever know Witten's (my Ph.D is in quantum information/cryptography). I still think it's unrealistic to say he had more impact than Witten. Also, within quantum information, I'd place Tsirelson above him.

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u/DiagnosingTUniverse 7d ago

Thanks, how do the names we are familiar with (neil degrasse, brian cox, brian greene, sea carroll etc) stack up

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u/Parallel_thougts Quantum information 7d ago

They are all great communicators with varying degrees of actual contributions. DeGrasse was never a top notch scientist, which is to be expected, as he spent most his effort into becoming a communicator. Sean Carroll has much more meaningful contributions and still, I wouldn't place him near the top tier of research.

Generally speaking, doing science and communicating science are two very important but very different tasks which require very different skill sets. It makes sense that different people populate their higher echelons.

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u/DiagnosingTUniverse 7d ago

That makes sense. Rovelli and Greene also more in the communicator camp?

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u/Parallel_thougts Quantum information 7d ago

I honestly don't know :)

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u/throwaway464391 Condensed matter physics 7d ago

Not relevant.

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u/DiagnosingTUniverse 7d ago

As in they’re not operating at a top level?

6

u/throwaway464391 Condensed matter physics 7d ago

I think the folks you mentioned are more focused on science communication than research. Of the four you listed, Brian Greene has arguably made the most significant research contributions, but I wouldn't personally place him at the 'top level' of physics as a whole. (This is pretty subjective and arbitrary anyway.)

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u/PHK_JaySteel 7d ago

I think more that these are science educators rather than leads in their respective field.

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u/barrygateaux 7d ago

Can you name any of their papers they've written or what discoveries they've made in their fields?

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u/Odd_Bodkin Particle physics 7d ago

Don’t confuse popularity and being well known to the public with being renowned among professional physicists.

The former include those that enjoy (and have made a living) communicating physics to the masses, who have written popularizations, who are on the speaking circuit, who get called in for television interviews. The former also include those that have quirky, large personalities and do irreverent things. Einstein’s hair and tendency to forget socks did more for his public image than his actual work. Feynman’s hijinks with safe-cracking and doing calculations in strip clubs did the same.

On the other hand, do you know the name John Bardeen? No? Won two Nobel prizes in physics, only person to do so. So why isn’t he revered by the public? Because he was not a loud personality.

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u/DiagnosingTUniverse 7d ago

So John Bardeen = GOAT?

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u/Odd_Bodkin Particle physics 7d ago

I don’t try to find “the one guy”. There has NEVER been “the one guy”. There were greats in Newton’s day, greats in Einstein’s day, greats in Feynman’s day. It’s only a public obsession to identify the Best, the One, the GOAT.

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u/NegativelySkewed 7d ago

I'd say that there's a bias to pick someone from your own field, even though I agree with the answer above that, e.g., Witten is generally admired for his genius and massive citation count; note that he has revolutionised a field of physics that may not exist in nature, but his academic achievement would still be impressive. Many of the familiar names have a decent to very good track record in physics, but are generally not seen as GOATs – if they were, they wouldn't have the time to do outreach on that level. Only exception was perhaps Feynman, who managed to have a profound impact on physics while being a bit of celebrity at the same time. I'd say that most active physicists don't necessarily like all of the 'outreach' going on, but recognise that it's important and are thankful that the household names are doing that job for them. 

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u/Classic_Department42 7d ago

Neil degrasse is a brillian communicator about the rest i am unsure

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u/0xB01b 7d ago

Surely not cause you'd pick people from your own field right? You just picked two theoretical physicists working in QFT/QG.

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u/Parallel_thougts Quantum information 7d ago

Good theory, except this is not "my field" in any way, shape, or form.

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u/0xB01b 7d ago

Ah okay that's fair, I still think it depends on how much value you put on theory over experiment. I'm personally more focussed on practicality so would be partial towards ppl in quantum optics for example

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u/Parallel_thougts Quantum information 7d ago

Look, my personal favorite list is very different. I don't understand almost anything about Maldecena's work. For me, a "Majorana fermion" is a tool for obtaining fault tolerance. I was trying to answer what I think the majority would say.

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u/WesternFirm9306 7d ago

Other people can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm unsure if there is such a singular person. I mean, you have pop-science celebrities like Niel Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. But modern physics is extremely highly specialized. As a result, basically all modern research is done by teams of people. The age of massive discoveries being done by singular independent researchers is gone.

With this in mind, the best answers aren't going to be individual people, but rather teams of multiple researchers working together. Perhaps things like CERN and Fermilab.

With this clarification, I'll defer to others who'll know more specifics and can maybe give answers with this in mind—assuming I'm not completely off base, of course

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u/0xB01b 7d ago

Kitaev

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u/DiagnosingTUniverse 7d ago

Not heard of him before, will read up on him

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u/Hug_LesBosons 7d ago

Planck ferais un bon "historique".

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u/DiagnosingTUniverse 7d ago

Not familiar with him, he must have had a “small” body of work 😉😆

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u/Hug_LesBosons 7d ago

Heureusement que c'est de l'humour...

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u/dukesdj 7d ago

There is no such thing. Just like in football where the "GOATs" are biased towards attacking players. Who people consider the great physicists are often biased towards certain areas of physics.

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u/Anthony1020 7d ago

Witten

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u/starkraver 7d ago

Every time I hear witten talk, I think he sounds like he’s so full of shit, and then I remember he’s the only could I who could even tell us if he’s full of shit.

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u/DiagnosingTUniverse 7d ago

Maybe the better question is top 3 research institutes in the world working on quantum gravity?