Tesla HAS to happen.
Cannon, Meitner, Noether, R. Franklin, and Bell Burnell are the five women who should have received Nobel Prizes but did not. I still love Lovelace and Hopper as possible choices.
von Guericke, Boyle, Hooke, Carnot, Joule, Papin, Savery, Newcomen, Black, Watt, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Planck, Clausius, Rankine, Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Duhem, Lewis, Randall, and Guggenheim are all from thermodynamics.
If you want to get the rocket science in there - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Goddard, and Hermann Oberth preceded von Braun.
If you want women aerospace engineers/rocket scientists, Mary Sherman Morgan and Yvonne Brill top the list. Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first female in space, and Yuri Gagarin was the first male in space.
My desire for field names:
- More Americans (I get jealous of the FTC fields)
- More women would be nice.
- Maybe an Engineer?
How about: Feynmann, Lovelace, Watt, Tesla?
Or: Sagan, Hypatia, Jobs, Armstrong?
You could name it after the Wright brothers, and get two for one.
The FTC super regional in San Antonio named one of its fields after Ellen Ochoa…
the push toward female name for the sake of female names is really sketchy. and i would like to see poeple who made things not just ideas.
Tesla
Eames
Fuller
Looking at the division already we have:
“historical” or “classic” engineer(Archimedes)
Astronomer (Galileo)
Classical physicist (Newton)
Modern Physicist (Curie/Einstein)
The new fields should probably be named for people in different fields. The two that come to mind are Aerospace and Computer Science. My nominations would be:
Aerospace - Goddard, von Braun, or Qian Xuesen (He founded JPL and the Chinese space program, his bio is pretty interesting.)
Computer Science - Hopper, Lovelace, Turing, or maybe even Babbage.
Tesla. With the number of contributions he’s made to the world of both mechanical and electrical engineering, he seems like the obvious choice. For those of you less familiar with his work, here’s a bit of perspective (not to mention one of the funniest, most eye-opening things I’ve ever read) (Warning: language) (But it’s definitely worth it) http://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
Tesla and Turing are the ones that response with me.
I think we should have some engineers represented. Don’t get me wrong science is great but this is really an engineering competition.
Archimedes was an engineer. So was Edison.
Tesla and Turing!
One should be named after Dean!
I definitely second an Asimov Division! He was the first person to use the word “Robotics,” created the Three Laws of Robotics, and is thought of as the father of Science Fiction. Bring the love for inventing great stories.
I like Asimov and Tesla.
+1 For these field names.
I hope someone from *FIRST *is watching this thread and is going to use these two.
It would be really telling about how FIRST did actually go forward with naming new field names. I wonder if they would pick from internally or do like a poll of FRC teams.
Walter Cronkite.
I wouldn’t be surprised if FIRST begins to push STEAM rather than STEM (adding Art to STEM). It seems they’re going that direction (and rightfully so). I wouldn’t leave artists out of the mix for field names.
If we’re going the sci-fi route…
Jules Verne. Rather prolific, and shockingly accurate with some of the devices he wrote about. Example, the Nautilus in 20000 Leagues Under the Sea could be considered to be quite similar to modern submarines, at least in concept if not in fact. Or, the Albatross from Clipper of the Clouds, which was made of paper (in a composite form), was heavier than air, and could beat any ligher-than-air craft at the time, at least in the story–see “airplane” and “helicopter”. Some would consider Verne to be the inventor of sci-fi–as I recall, he did come before Asimov.
Also, Robert Heinlein.
Tesla tops my list.
If you are looking for a minority, albeit one still living, Neil deGrasse Tyson comes to mind.
If you want a well known name, I think Carl Sagan is the way to go.
Also, for those unfamiliar with his work, look at about half of Edison’s “work”…
My Votes:
- Johannes Gutenberg (engineered the printing press - bringing an end of the dark ages and starting the enlightenment)
- James Watt (enabled industrial revolution and feedback control)
- Rachel Carson (a controversial choice? Certainly changed the way engineers and everyone else think about their work and world)
- Ada Byron / Lovelace (first computer programmer)