There are hero artists(Vincent Van Gogh...) , hero musicians(Beethoven...), hero scientists (Einstein, Newton, Madam Curie... ), but why there seems no hero engineers?
Actually, there is, like Edison, Bell, Armstrong, and Amelia Earhart, etc. But when people talk about these people, they normally do not consciously recognize that they are engineers. They think Edison and Bell are inventors or scientists, Armstrong is astronaut. The underlying reasons are:
(1) Engineers do not have a common identity. People usually regard different branches of engineering differently, they don't regard them as a whole: engineers. We don't learn them in elementary school as hero-engineers.
(2)We maybe could find some clues in linguistics. The different suffixes "-ist, -er, and -ian..." actually represent different levels of social status, like physician is different from physicist. Physicist more likely become hero, because they are doing work representing the whole human wisdom. Engineers are regarded as smart, but scientists are talented, gifted, and brilliant. In the Chinese language, the word to describe scientist and engineer are also different. The word for scientist is more like they are gifted, and creative, they are born with those wisdom in their mind, and they are doing things for the whole human being. The word for engineer is more like they gain their knowledge from experience and practice, they could master all the skills, so they are smart.
Most of the time, heroes are more related to being poor and struggle, and still do thing for human welfare or just because of their own talented brain. but engineers are more social, more related to money. They are just a group of people who are smarter than ordinary people, and they make money for themselves from that, but they are not heroes.
Linguistics is so interesting! Many things are originated from language, or have reasons or clues in language. That's all human wisdom, all how human communication our knowledge.
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