From the Latin scientifĭcus, the adjective scientist allows naming that belonging to or relating to science. This last term, which comes from scientia (“knowledge”), refers to the set of methods and techniques that organize the information acquired through experience or introspection.
The systematic application of the aforementioned methods and techniques allows the production of scientific knowledge, which is concrete and verifiable information. In this case, the adjective scientific is linked to the precision and objectivity implicit in the methodology of science.
On the other hand, a scientist is the person who is dedicated to science. There are numerous professions whose exercise turns the subject into a scientist, although, in general, the term is associated with the sciences that are developed in laboratories.
In any case, anthropologists, biologists, physicists, paleontologists, political scientists, chemists, and sociologists, among many others, are scientists.
Many are the scientists who have become key figures in history thanks to the contributions, theories or discoveries they have made in different areas or disciplines. This would be the case, for example, of the German Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) who is considered by the vast majority as the most important scientist of the entire 20th century.
That aforementioned consideration or cataloging comes from the fact that he raised the theory of general relativity, which was a real revolution about the concept of gravity. A fact that, in turn, led to the creation of a new scientific branch within the field of Physics: Cosmology, which is responsible for studying and analyzing the evolution of the Universe.
All this without forgetting that he carried out the approach to other questions that even led him to obtain the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. We are referring to his contributions to the field of Theoretical Physics and his ideas about the photoelectric effect.
In the same way, we cannot ignore other scientists who, through their work, have become the most important and influential in history. Among them are figures of the stature of the physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, the British Isaac Newton, the also British Charles Darwin for his theory on the evolution of species, Thomas Edison who is the father of the light bulb or the Polish Marie Curie for her discovery of radioactivity.
According to DigoPaul, there are several distinctions to recognize the world’s leading scientists. The most important globally is the Nobel Prize, which has been awarded since 1901 at the will of the inventor of dynamite, the Swedish Alfred Nobel.
The Nobel laureates honor the most prominent personalities in physics, chemistry, medicine, economics and literature, in addition to recognizing those activists who worked for peace.
The activity of the scientist, many times, is questioned from the moral point of view. A scientist who uses his knowledge to invent a weapon, for example, is not contributing to social development, unless the concrete knowledge is not harmful by itself.
