Physics World poll names Richard Feynman one of 10 greatest physicists of all time

Richard Feynman, the legendary physicist from the California
Institute of Technology, has been named the seventh greatest physicist of all time in a poll taken by the British journal Physics World. The poll surveyed 130 leading physicists worldwide.

Feynman, who died in 1988 after four decades on the Caltech faculty,
is the only American to appear on the top 10 list, and the only one
who did his most important work in the second half of this century.
The others are (1) Albert Einstein, (2) Isaac Newton, (3) James Clerk
Maxwell, (4) Niels Bohr, (5) Werner Heisenberg, (6) Galileo Galilei,
(8) Paul Dirac, (9) Erwin Schrödinger, and (10) Ernest Rutherford.

"I would have ranked him a bit higher," said Rochus Vogt, a Caltech
physics professor, former provost, and former division chair in
Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. "He was certainly the greatest
physicist of my age.

"He was not only a top-notch physicist, but he was an artist, a
Renaissance type of person," Vogt said. "He had certain insights and
perceptions in physics that I have no word to describe other than
'artistic.'"

Robert Christy, a Caltech physicist who worked with Feynman on the
Manhattan Project, said he thinks his late colleague richly deserves
to be on the list.

"He certainly ranks as one of the great physicists-that's correct,"
said Christy, who served as Caltech provost during Feynman's later
years.

Both Christy and Vogt are surprised that Enrico Fermi was omitted from
the list. They are both also a bit wary of the precise order of the
rankings.

"As far as I'm concerned, you don't place great people in order,"
Christy says. "Certain physicists are in a class by themselves, and
certainly all of these in the list are in that class."