Throughout the history of science, we will find that physicists account for the vast majority, and some scientists who have heard of it, such as Galileo, Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Yang Zhenning and so on.
However, the influence of celebrities in other disciplines is not as good as the above, such as Mendeleev (inventor of periodic table of elements) in chemistry, lavoisier, father of modern chemistry, Fleming (inventor of penicillin) in biology, Watson and Crick (discovery of DNA double helix structure). Of course, if you come into contact with many fields of biology and chemistry, these people can hear and lose, but the general public may not know, Einstein and Newton must know.
The reason is still related to the special position of physics. In science, physics is in a basic position. Although mathematics is more basic than physics, it is only a tool to study science.
For example, there is a saying that simply saying that Newton is a mathematician is simply belittling Newton's status.
Calculus invented by Newton is of course important, but Newton's greatest contribution to mankind is mainly in physics. Newton established classical mechanics, and then established science and technology on the basis of classical mechanics, which made human civilization take off. From this point of view, the breakthrough of physics seems to be more important than other disciplines.
For another example, Leibniz and Newton invented calculus almost at the same time. Leibniz's calculus is more advanced, but Newton's evaluation in history is much higher than Leibniz's, mainly because Newton's achievements in physics are unparalleled.
In addition, from the perspective of subject popularization, mathematics, as the most basic subject, has a higher popularization rate than physics. After all, we have been exposed to mathematics since the first grade of primary school or even earlier. In the study of mathematics and physics, we will find such a feature that people who are good at mathematics are not necessarily good at physics, but those who are good at physics are absolutely excellent at mathematics.
There is also a joke about physicists and mathematicians:
The engineer's house is on fire. He took out the fire extinguisher and finally put it out.
The physicist's house is on fire. He spent half a day researching a new type of fire extinguisher to put out the fire.
The mathematician's house caught fire and the mathematician died unfortunately. The next day, people found his notebook, which said, I found a wonderful fire extinguishing method, but the house is too small for me to implement.
Other scientific disciplines are essentially extensions of physics. For example, chemistry is a discipline based on physics, while biology is a discipline based on chemistry, and there is even overlap between them, such as chemical kinetics and molecular biology. , which is doomed to the more prominent position of physics.