My top two:
Aldous Huxley - extra bonus: his wife ( Laura Huxley )'s books are also amazing. Richard Feynman - he is such a funny guy.
+1000 For mentioning Feynman. The pure and humble genius of this man, called "The Great Teacher", is in my view only rivaled by Professor Einstein himself.
When I want to introduce someone to Feynman, I often show them this video, "Why?".
The clip is a 7 minute outtake of an interview Feynman gave in his later years which focuses on what happens when the interviewer asks the question "Why do magnets work?". To answer this, Feynman meta-explains how explanations can be given in the first place, setting up the reason why the magnet so hard to directly answer. In this, he tells me more than I heard in my 5 years of studying physics.
(In short, about the magnet question: we are used to explaining/describing things by analogy to other, known, things. But you can't say "magnets attract when separated in the same way that rubber bands try to constrict if you pull them apart" because that's cheating, since the reason rubber bands act like that is because of the magnetic action of their atoms. So how can I answer a "Why?" when there is no other shared experience we have that I can analogize it to?)
<3
PS: If anyone reading is interested in electricity, and perhaps is like me — very disappointed in the teaching of it, disappointed because it seems like magic to me, but is treated like "math" to the professors, I HIGHLY recommend reading a few pages of Feynmans work (which covers all of known physics) that deals specifically with Electricity: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_01.html
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Humble, humorous, and real, haha.
I enjoy the way how he simplifies complicated things. For example, I used to find physics scary and something far away with so many big words, but it could actually be so practical and fun from Feynman.
And my favourite quote from him: once you teach people's names about something, that is the moment they stop learning! Knowing the name of something doesn't mean they actually understand it.
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CORRECTION, SORRY: I couldn't edit in time: The final link (about electricity) should be this:
The one I gave previously is also about electricity, but it is a link to the more advanced chapter in the second volume of his works.
This link I just gave is the one which tells you everything about electricity and how magic it is. It was what made me feel about Feynman that there are still highly trained ("educated") people who have curiosity about the strangeness of our incredible world. A feeling my years in university unfortunately had crushed.
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