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In America intellectuals have been considered to be bad or dubious for at least 150 years. Mostly this attitude came from the South while they were still trying to justify slavery, and by rapacious corporations discrediting thinkers who saw the evil of their ways.
Sheesh, I say this as if it were past-tense.
"There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."
— George Orwell
I'd have to say I regard Feynman as an intelligent person over an intellectual person.
Intellectuals ask alota rhetorical questions - Feynman's were always real.
He was an intellectual lockpick and safecracker - because he was smart.
He was the opposite of Carl Sagan, a mere quintessential intellectual.
Many consider John Bardeen as the best American Physicist of the post war era. Bardeen was a midwestern farm boy who was both a great experimentalist and a great theorist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize twice in Physics. Once for the inventing the transistor (with Shockley and Brittain) and ushering in the world of solid state elecronics. The second award was for the quantum theory of superconductivity which is called the BCS theory after Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer. Bardeen was a nice quiet person who let his work do the talking.
Interesting opinion. You're right. A list of intellectuals is about the shortest list any American could think of. Explains why I started this thread.
I don't think Einstein ever received a US citizenship. I was interested in American intellectuals only.
Einstein became a naturalized US citizen and considered it one of proudest accomplishments in his life. Life magazine printed a picture of him standing with other people with hand raised taking his oath of citizenship.
And in accordance with the threads original question... how many Americans would you suppose recognize the name of John Bardeen?
I will agree that virtually no one would know a John Bardeen because what passes for intellectual discussion in this nation today are the utterances of the judging panel on "American Idol" or the latest tone from Lady Gaga. In the sciences there are very few who are actively involved in the discussion. The membership in the American Physical Society (APS) numbers only 57,000 out of a nation of 310,000,000 or about about 1 in 6000. In subfields like High Energy Physics the total number of people who earn a living doing this number about 2,000. The same is true for astronomy which has 1,800 full time participants. So America's future if it depends on science and technology at all depends on a frighteningly small number of people.
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