So AT, who's the brightest person you ever met in real life?

[brianmanahan]

Noam Chomsky

"Never has a little boy sat so alone at his computer and busted out such inconceivably thick rhymes. MC Frontalot has tapped the zeitgeist. It is with good reason that he is so very famous and rich."

~ noam chomsky

 

[phucheneh]

One time I met that Sheldon guy from The Big Bang Theory, but it turned out he's actually not very smart at all. Just really, really gay.

 

[who?]

One time I met that Sheldon guy from The Big Bang Theory, but it turned out he's actually not very smart at all. Just really, really gay.

You're talking about Jim Parsons the actor who plays Sheldon. Sheldon the character is extremely smart and apparently straight.

 

[nageov3t]

probably one of my friends from high school... he can speak 4 languages fluently, dual majored in poly sci/mathematics at an ivy league college, and graduated from Columbia Law School.

he's more or less wasting his brain as a research clerk thanks to severe social anxiety, but he's happy so *shrug*

 

[SsupernovaE]

My good friend and colleague Nima Arkani-Hamed.

 

[doubledeluxe]

Johannes Kepler. Right before the quickening.

 

[JumBie]

Anyone who doesn't discuss religion, politics or any of their personal beliefs to me is intelligent.

 

[bryanl]

Niels Bohr, but I don't remember.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

That would be the albino kid from HS.

He looked like this, and was the brightest person I have ever seen.

 

[gorcorps]

Nobody really stands out too much, but my buddy Greg from school was damn smart. While everybody else was getting their ass kicked, he had a knack for everything and never broke a sweat. The only other kids getting grades like him were weird shut-ins that had no social life to get those grades. Greg had the same social life as everyone else, but was just damn smart.

 

[CraKaJaX]

College Freshman Calc 2 class. Professor Nishikawa.... used to do the most insane calculations in his head while going through examples with the class. A year later he left the boring freshman hungover kids and moved to graduate classes that had names I couldn't even understand. He just -looked- smart.

http://www.clarkson.edu/news/2007/news-release_2007-08-23-1.html

 

[Sho'Nuff]

For me probably Ed Witten.

Dean Kamen

Followed (surprisingly quite closely) by a couple of pro se inventors.

Bright /= commerically successful.

 

[Cappuccino]

My Mom. My Dad is a bit thick -_-

 

[Sho'Nuff]

I disagree with nearly everything that guys says. However I would not turn down the chance to have coffee with him.

As for me: Dan Akroyd

You think Akroyd is intelligent? I've met him several times and each time I came away thinking he was a huge douche and a gigantic asshole.

Maybe I missed something.

 

[manimal]

Brian Greene , Michio Kaku, and Antonino Zichichi who was one of my teachers.



Cant remember the name of the guy who was working on the Tocamak reactor at Argonne National Labs but he opened my mind up to science like nobody else when I interned there.

 

[DrPizza]

I've done chemistry for a while, starting in 400 level classes as a freshman; then engineering for 3 years - and at the #1 school for that type of engineering, then mathematics (3 more years), with minors in computer science and education along with way, with some grad work in physics, and grad work in education, I think I can say, education grad professors (that I had) - not in my top 100. But, I've run into quite a few very bright people.

So, it's tough to pick the brightest among the professors I've run across. Plus, there are a few colleagues who teach physics at other schools who I'm often impressed with. And, I'd think you'd have to know the person outside their area of specialty to really recognize if all their brilliance is constrained within their field, and they're otherwise not very smart. I.e., they get 30 papers published in a year, but need instructions to put together a kid's toy that contains 5 parts.

If I could go back in time, and meet a smart person, I'd love to meet Richard Feynman & spend a few hours listening to him.

 

[alkemyst]

I disagree with nearly everything that guys says. However I would not turn down the chance to have coffee with him.

As for me: Dan Akroyd

We may go to his vodka tasting this month.

 

[alkemyst]

My Mom. My Dad is a bit thick -_-

That may work out for her.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Ehh, my brother is amazing when it comes to music. The guy can pick up any instrument and instantly play any style of music, his band usually plays blues, but he plays and/or composes everything from hiphop to bluegrass to country blues to bebop and every imaginable fusion. he can play just about everything by ear after hearing it once, and he is to some extent able to read and use sheet music though he is not classically educated.

 

[kranky]

The one who comes to mind is a woman I first met 20 years ago. She was a programmer at a small local company (probably 15-20 employees). We used a niche software product of theirs. It was obvious she was amazingly smart.

A few years ago I see her on CNBC. She's working at an investment firm as an Exec VP, and she's being interviewed about the state of the stock market. I've seen her quoted in Forbes magazine and other financial publications.

Would never have believed someone could leave programming in their late 20's with zero background in finance, and rise to the top of an investment firm.

 

[Majes]

Had a professor at Mount St. Mary's named Scott Weiss for some of my math courses. Was extremely bright but had a fit at me leaving the math program to go into education...

Here is him engineering the first 3-way tie in Jeopardy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72zn2KODSsY

 

[Printer Bandit]

Daniel Tammet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z22H89rIMHk

 

[vi edit]

I had a week long class at a company that manufactured EEG & Sleep lab equipment & interpretation software. The class was taught by one of their engineering executives. He was the most unassuming person you'd think of. Built like John Goodman, red hair, and just a really fun guy.

But he has like 3 PhD's, a couple masters, taught himself how to talk and read Japanese so that he could work with the other engineers in the company based out of Japan. The guy was a physics and electrical engineering genius that did a lot of the patent work for their modality tech. He was one of those guys that had so much stuff bouncing around his head that he averaged like 3 hours of sleep a day.

When I was there it was one of his last days as he got hired on to be the Dean for one of the top biomedical engineering schools in the nation.

 

[Gillbot]

I disagree with nearly everything that guys says. However I would not turn down the chance to have coffee with him.

As for me: Dan Akroyd

Personal points aside, he is still a very intelligent man.

 

[boomerang]

I have two. It's tough to pick just one.

My last year of HS I attended Vocational School for Automotive Service. Our teacher had just graduated from college and was not all that much older than any of us. I have stayed in touch with him for 42 years. He lives about 6 miles from me. He quit teaching a few years after getting into it and went to work for Snap-on. He partnered with some guys and they ran a Camaro at the Bonneville Salt Flats for a number of years setting some records in the process. His wife drove the car too and holds some records with it.

http://www.superchevy.com/features/camp-1202-camaro-757-bonneville-land-speed-car/

The pictures don't do the degree of engineering it took to put that car together justice. It was an awesome thing to look at.

He and his wife, now both retired, run a Funny Car for shit's and giggles.

http://www.christophersenracing.uncle-earls.com/photo-gallery.html

He's in the red hat and his wife is holding the helmet. She drives the car.

My second pick is the guy who's racing team I crewed on for 10 years. An extremely intelligent guy. We worked very well together but I eventually got very burned out on the whole thing. It's much more fun driving than building, maintaining and crewing.

http://www.djrace.com/

He's on the far left in the top picture and autographing the hat in the lower. When I left, we were racing in what was at that time called the Speedvision World Challenge GT Series. We were only able to make the last three races of that season because building three new cars for the series took far, far longer than was anticipated. With a three car team, we took third in our first race of the season at Grand Rapids, MI, second at Pikes Peak and in the final race of the season at Laguna Seca we took first. Very, very sharp guy and the cars were built with a vast majority of off the shelf GM components to keep the costs low. It's pretty awesome to do so well against guys that had spent mega-dollars putting cars together