The brilliance of Feynman.

Richard Feynman was a great American physicist that, among many intellectual accomplishments, helped solve the cause of the Challenger explosion (the whole 'O-ring' thing) - and even in doing that, his brilliant ability to figure things out and later explain them in easy-to-understand terms (like the O-ring ice-water demonstration he did at the NASA press-conference) really showed why he was so well respected. There are great BBC interviews that you can watch in pieces on youtube on common everyday science questions. This one is a great example of how well he could explain things. Way to go, Feynman.

Also- he was a prankster, party animal, ladies man that spent as much time at the Copacabana in Brazil as possible. And he played bongos.