I would probably chose Marie Curie, or if I had to pick a living scientist I’d say Stephen Hawking.
But I’d happily skip lunch with either of them if I could have a couple of hours as a “fly on the wall” at the 1927 Solvay Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference. The photo about halfway down the linked page shows all the people there, and they include all the physicists I learned about at university, and when I first saw that photo it really blew my mind to think that they were all there at the same place and at the same time!!!
It would definitely be Richard Feynman. He was a Particle Physicists who won a Nobel Prize for understanding the interactions of particles with light at the fundamental level. He was also an amazing character, a genius since he was a kid with a great imagination and who had a very interesting way of looking at things. The BBC did a series of interviews on him but this is my favorite one (only 1 minute long!)
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