Compared to Feynman or Erdős or Tesla ;-)
I say that living mathematicians like John Nash Jr., Shing-tung Yau, and Alexander Grothendieck have much more interesting lives than the examples you mentioned.
:)
I was watching the original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and there was one scene that stood out as marking this film as truly from another time.
Klaatu is talking to the boy, asking him about who the famous scientists are. And the boy knows! And acts as if everyone in American knows!
I gather there are many interesting contemporary scientists, but they simply get no attention in modern culture.
Most people know of, say, Hawking or Perelman because of their personal stories. But even their lives aren't as near as compelling as the greats of the last generation.
Not to mention the face that 50 years ago, the work being done was much more significant. I hate to say it, but no truly 'ground breaking' work has really been done in the last half century. There are still a lot of open questions - but we just haven't found the answer. We've just been refining our knowledge of the important work done before that.
(Note: I don't mean to say no new work has been done, just nothing major. Name something done in the last 50 years that could compare to the fundamental work done in Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Genetics, Computation Theory, etc. before that.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals
All since 1970, is that recent enough? And, ya know, sometimes it does actually take a little time for major achievements to be recognized as such.
I'm not saying the things you list weren't hugely important, I'm just saying that they weren't as fundamental as the entirely new fields that were developed earlier (relativity, quantum mechanics, theory of computation, etc).
And you're being overly reductive when you say the Grand Challenge is a "pretty natural extension of Turing, Von Neumann, etc.'s". I'm pretty sure the physicists that you've mentioned would take exception to the idea that their work didn't have a clear lineage of its own.
I just feel like their were are far fewer (if any) of those truly ground breaking discoveries now than there were in the early 20th century. This might just be perspective bias, but it seems like scientific progress was being made much more quickly from, say, 1850-1950 than any other time in human history.
We still have a lot of big open questions, but progress seems to have slowed down. Hopefully the LHC will change that ...
As for the Grand Challenge, I work in the AI field myself (I'm engaged in some work for DARPA right now, and I know several people who were on Grand Challenge teams), and we're still basically stuck in turing/von-neumann paradigms. In my opinion, most of what we've done in the last 50 years in AI is come up with better search heuristics. It makes AI/ML much more useful - but it's nothing really paradigm shifting.
I will of course grant this could all be in my head, since I haven't, and probably couldn't, define a metric that measures the 'significance' of theory (maybe something about marginal information-theoretic predictive power, but that's difficult to measure and still not quite right).
As for the next big thing? My guess is that the field of high dimensional analysis (encompassing machine learning, compressed sensing, etc) will be comparable in importance to any of the fields you've mentioned.
What?!?
Statistical arbitrage, BS, etc form the fundamental theory of finance. It's certainly as fundamental to finance as DNA is to biology.
In terms of real world impact, financial engineering is definitely greater than knowledge of DNA. So far genetics has gotten us very little in terms practical outcomes.
Maybe you are just making a judgment that finance is less valuable than other fields? If so, I can't really argue with that.
You need some perspective.
As far as I'm aware, all genetic engineering has gotten us is GM crops and a some drugs which only affect a few marginal cases. Hopefully that will change in the future, but I prefaced my statement with "so far".
Feynman traveled to Brazil to learn Bongo drums on whim, he worked in a Strip Club, mastered the art of the pickup, broke into TS safes at the Manhattan Project, was a well known painter under a pseudonym, etc.
Erdos was basically homeless, and would show up at mathematician's doors unannounced looking for a roof - and while under their roof, would collaborate on some of the most ground breaking work of the century. He was a heavy drug user, active libertarian, etc.
I'm sure Hawking can compete in terms of intellect or work (I have no idea - I'm not capable of judging), but he is nowhere near as interesting.
But I still stand by saying that Feynman was more entertaining.
I agree that Feynman is entertaining, and he's something of a legend.
I do feel that Hawking is not just fascinating in his own right but he's AMAZINGLY inspirational. Given the adversity he has faced for much of his life, the fact that he still pursues his love of science should be a lesson to all of us.
To call his story merely "extraordinary" is doing a grave disservice to such an incredible individual.