Top 8 Scientific Feuds

Science! It's full of controversy! Like this one, which happens to be important to me! But guess what. Scientists have found things to argue about since, like, forever.

For instance!

8. Telsa v. Edison

Basically, these two guys had a game where they shot electricity at each other. It got out of hand once and they became superhuman… with Edison as the hero and Tesla as the villain. This is all just to say, you could make a friggin’ sweet comic book out of Tesla and Edison.

7. Galileo v. Kepler

It’s not what you think. This was basically a “Kepler ate the last Christmas cookie, Galileo never got over it” kind of thing. Sad, really. Scientists can be so cruel.

6. Feynman v. Schrodinger

It all started when Feynman and Schrodinger were pounding some shots at a bar and this blonde pretty-young-thing sidled up to the pair and was all, “What’s up, Dick?” Feynman left the bar with the girl and the bartender commented to Schrodinger, “He’s totally going to bang her,” to which Schrodinger responded, “He is… and he isn’t.” Feynman was later heard yelling mid-coitus, “No uncertainty here, Erwin!”

5. Turing v. Erdos

These two brilliant mathematicians were locked in a lifelong battle to see who could be the most batshit brilliant/insane mind of his time. Erdos did pretty well for himself—regularly taking amphetamines, referring to children as “epsilons” and God as “the Supreme Facist”—but Turing wins the belt for killing himself with a cyanide-laced apple, death by reenactment of his favorite fairy tale, Snow White.

4. Mendeleev v. Mendel

Mendel and Mendeleev had no scientific quibble, but both were known to complain bitterly, “Why won’t he change his fucking name!? No one will ever remember me if that fucker won’t go by something else.”

3. Bohr v. Thompson

Though Thompson admitted that the Bohr model of the atom “totes made more sense,” he refused to concede that it was a “tastier” possibility than the Plum Pudding Model.

2. Cajal v. Golgi

The dispute between these two (EDIT: it used to say "Italian" here, but now it doesn't thanks to brilliant commenter Anna) neuroscientists arose when Ramon y Cajal used Camillo Golgi’s technique of silver chromate staining to disprove the accepted theory that the nervous system was a reticular meshwork, and instead, that it was made up of discrete cells, later called neurons. Rumor has it that after Cajal and Golgi co-accepted the 1906 Nobel Prize in Medecine, Golgi shoved it in Cajal’s mouth and punched him in the nuts like, five times. “Stain this, motherfucker!” he yelled, presumably in Italian.

1. Watson v. Crick

Renowned for their discovery of the structure of DNA, these two science-bros spent most of their non-science time competing for the affections of Rosalind Franklin, the biophysicist/hottie who, let’s face it, did most of their work. Their passionate collaborations—both in the lab and in the bedroom—were later adapted into the film, Y tu mama tambien.