[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

    This section is rarely used, I thought I'd put something in here.

Is it just time and numbers that are important rather than who you have working on science?
Are there some discoveries and theories that are so extraordinary that only one person could have made them?

    Let's take Newton as one example.  We tend to remember the contributions he made to mathematics such as Newton's laws of motion.  We overlook the fact that a lot of his Philosophi? Naturalis Principia Mathematica contained discussions of what can reasonably be described as some philosophy and theology.   We have selectively taken out only the most relevant and useful bits of his work and only that bit of it tends to be remembered and highly valued.
   If you disregard all the junk that you (the reader) have written over your lifetime and just retain the best bits,  then it's very likely that you have created something profound and well worth preserving for future generations.  Well done and congratulations to you.
    Arguably if we had a million monkeys with typewriters, then all you need to do is disregard the bits of junk in the middle (let's say keep a sentence at a time) and you should be able to find a Shakespearean play in there.

   So, is it just a game of applying time and a large number of scientists to a problem before any problem in science would eventually be resolved?
   You might think of other famous scientists like Einstein and wonder if you just had to have an extraordinary mind to think of such bizarre things like applying a curvature to spacetime but actually it wasn't just Einstein coming up with these ideas.   The mathematician David Hilbert was apparently also developing a theory similar to General relativity.  Einstein knew this and was arguably more driven to complete and publish his work faster.   I don't know how far Hilbert had progressed but it is commonly thought that Hilbert would have got there and if his version of the theory had been published it might have been even more elegant.
     We tend to be aware of mathematicians like Minkowski and Riemann that contributed to Einsteins work but there may well have been others getting involved more regularly but rarely credited.  See https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/not-lone-genius   where a historian looks into the involvement of Einstein's freinds from college (Besso and Grossman) and also Einstein's first wife Mileva Marić Einstein who was a brilliant physicist but at this sort of time that was never going to be accepted or recognised. 

     Albert and Mileva were admitted to the physics-mathematics section of the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich (now ETH) in 1896....
      By the end of their classes in 1900, Mileva and Albert had similar grades (4.7 and 4.6, respectively) except in applied physics where she got the top mark of 5 but he, only 1. She excelled at experimental work while he did not. But at the oral exam, Professor Minkowski gave 11 out of 12 to the four male students but only 5 to Mileva. Only Albert got his degree.

["The Forgotten Life of Einstein's First Wife", Scientific American.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/ ]

    We know that Einstein discussed relativity with his wife, there are letters with evidence of that but most of the discussions were verbal rather than being written down.  You should not underestimate how brilliant his wife was.

    ...nobody made it clearer than Albert Einstein himself that they collaborated on special relativity when he wrote to Mileva on 27 March 1901: ?How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.?    

["The Forgotten Life..., Scientific American]

    We aren't sure exactly why Mileva's name didn't appear as a co-author on any of Einstein's work, it is suggested (source:   Radmila Milentijević: Mileva Marić Einstein: Life with Albert Einstein, United World Press, 2015) that given the prevalent bias against women at the time, a publication co-signed with a woman might have carried less weight.
Whatever the situation may have been, Mileva had much bigger problems to worry about then getting her name on a paper:   In 1901 she became pregnant out of wedlock  ..(she) tried to persuade Albert to marry her. She gave birth to a girl named Liserl in January 1902. No one knows what happened to her. She was probably given to adoption.   

"The Forgotten Life...", S.A.

   It wasn't a great time for women in science in the 1900's.   Recall, for example, that the Nobel prize committee only wanted to recognise Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for the Nobel prize in 1903,  they needed their arm twisted to add Marie Curie's name to that list and it was only the insistence of Pierre Curie that ultimately made it happen.
- - - - - - - - - -

    Anyway, enough of the sad stuff.  I've just recently explained how special relativity could have been discovered by alternative routes if light hadn't been a massless particle, which is partly why this is now on my mind.   It's not just that there were other people involved in developing relativity, there are so many different ways in which relativity would have eventually been discovered.  It was inevitable.

   So, we're back to the original question:   
   Is any scientific discovery such that only one person could have found it?  Is scientific development just about applying numbers of scientists to study the problem and waiting for the problem to be broken with time?

   Looking just on the home front:  If a forum like this one can motivate a few people to study some science, wouldn't it be worth keeping it?   It doesn't matter if it's not discussing the latest developments or hosting the most erudite discussions.  Why are there rumours that the site is closing down and what could be done to maintain it?   

Best Wishes.

Late Editing:  Apologies for not getting all the accents and special symbols like ae to appear.  None of that works anymore.

[Halc]

I think Einstein himself admitted that the time was ripe for his theory, and he just got there first. Not to downplay the work, since so much was predicted and not verified until ages later, but it would have been done by others, even if not all by one person. He certainly had help himself.

I thought about it for a while, and the best candidates (without naming any) seem to be in the field of mathematics, discoveries that if not made, may not have been made for a long time or ever.

I can't think of a single similar feat in the area of physical sciences.

[paul cotter]

I believe that luck plays an important part in major discoveries. One could apply a top notch researcher to a particular area of science( where no breakthrough is possible ) and waste their career down a cul de sac. A less accomplished researcher might pick an alternate topic and strike a goldmine.

[Zer0]

Ummm...Rumours?

Geez!
Where else am i supposed to go...pfft.

Y'all know about the DONATE button on thenakedscientists.com website, Right?

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

Y'all know about the DONATE button on thenakedscientists.com website, Right?

   Yes I know about it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

What is a reasonable expectation and what do TNS need?
    The information on the donate page is suggesting 5 pounds every month, is that still sufficient or has the situation changed?

   I'm wondering if a "storage fee" would be reasonable and could be enforced without significantly altering the original purpose of the forum.   If forum posts were deleted after (lets say) 4 weeks that will keep the need for online servers down and reduce running costs.  It doesn't prevent the use of the forum for discussion or for getting questions answered.  It's controversial and may alter how people use the forum but not all of those changes would be negative.
If money is getting that tight then "controversial" is what might be required.   My stuff wouldn't be exempt - it can go.
   Another option is to put an internal message out to all the users:  "You've been using the site for a week,  please consider donating" etc.   My message box wouldn't be exempt.
   Wikipedia are quite skilled at analysing cookies and noticing even just when you have visited them a few times,  fire messages out to anyone who browses the site even without logging-in directly.   My computer won't be exempt.
    If you (TNS) just can't provide the forum free of charge then you just can't, economics has laws just like physics has laws.  So you could make a payment compulsory for people who want to use the site.  (As always, I won't be exempt).

    They're all controversial options but is it time that TNS staff did update people on the current situation and possibly ask for opinions  or, since it's your website and your money that is limited, just state what will be necessary.

Best Wishes.

[Zer0]

Sorry to derail the Discussion Eternal.
(just couldn't help it)

Well, Hopefully it's gonna remain a ' Rumour ' unless a MOD doesn't Confirm it.

Thou, I'd expect a Notification before anything shuts down.

& I cannot advocate to Donate until it's clear that action will Save the forum.

But there seems to be a one-time donate option instead of a recurring per monthly one.
(Wish it was ?1)

(Impressive suggestions much Appreciated)


Back to the Topic...

In my opinion, any fool given enough time, would eventually bell the cat.
(metaphorical)

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

   There has recently been a statement made by Chris here:
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=70438.msg705025#msg705025
    Where a server migration is discussed.

Best Wishes.

[alancalverd]

Back to the OP: Newton mentioned standing on the shoulders of giants, which is the polar opposite of Fleming, Becquerel et al who investigated an accidental anomaly - in Becquerel's case one that could not have been seen much earlier anyway.

The common element is "right man, right time", and I think the difference is in the balance between "man" and "time". Newton already had all the evidence for gravitation, spectroscopy, etc., and added an enquiring mind with a predisposition for orderly mathematical modelling, whereas it could be argued that Galileo and Bruno were individualistic revolutionaries who challenged orthodoxy by pushing it to its limits.

There's a third dimension to be considered: persistence, exemplified by Marie Curie's dogged pursuit of trace elements hidden in tons of rubble, to find the source of an anomaly.

I'd put Einstein in the same corner of the triangle as Newton: imposing order on existing data, then pushing the equation to predict "what if".

I'm coming to the conclusion that scientists are rationalisers, iconoclasts and hunters, in varying proportions. Picking Penzias and Wilson out of a hat, we start with persistently hunting the source of noise in an antenna, rationalising it as coming from a uniform source at 3K, and damaging the icon of an infinitely old and static observable universe.

[Zer0]

Btw, Whoos Ed Witten?

I hear that name Alot nowadays.