PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: physics
English physicist and mathematician
Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician, who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated...
German-American physicist
Albert Einstein, German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Einstein...
Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician
Galileo, Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific...
British physicist and chemist
Michael Faraday, English physicist and chemist whose many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism. Faraday, who became one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century,...
German scientist and philosopher
Hermann von Helmholtz, German scientist and philosopher who made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement of the...
British physicist
Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand-born British physicist considered the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867). Rutherford was the central figure in the study of radioactivity, and with...
German physicist and philosopher
Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and philosopher who discovered (1925) a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. For that discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932....
Danish physicist
Niels Bohr, Danish physicist who is generally regarded as one of the foremost physicists of the 20th century. He was the first to apply the quantum concept, which restricts the energy of a system to certain...
German physicist
Max Planck, German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918. Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame rests primarily...
Scottish engineer, mathematician, and physicist
William Thomson, Baron Kelvin, Scottish engineer, mathematician, and physicist who profoundly influenced the scientific thought of his generation. Thomson, who was knighted and raised to the peerage in...
British scientist
Joseph Black, British chemist and physicist best known for the rediscovery of “fixed air” (carbon dioxide), the concept of latent heat, and the discovery of the bicarbonates (such as bicarbonate of soda)....
Scottish mathematician and physicist
James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist best known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. He is regarded by most modern physicists as the scientist of the 19th century who had the greatest influence...
Italian-American physicist
Enrico Fermi, Italian-born American scientist who was one of the chief architects of the nuclear age. He developed the mathematical statistics required to clarify a large class of subatomic phenomena,...
Persian scholar and scientist
Al-Bīrūnī, Muslim astronomer, mathematician, ethnographist, anthropologist, historian, and geographer. Al-Bīrūnī lived during a period of unusual political turmoil in the eastern Islamic world. He served...
British physicist
Henry Cavendish, natural philosopher, the greatest experimental and theoretical English chemist and physicist of his age. Cavendish was distinguished for great accuracy and precision in research into the...
French scientist
Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist and physicist who pioneered investigations into the behaviour of gases, established new techniques for analysis, and made notable advances in applied chemistry....
German mathematician
Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time for his contributions to number theory, geometry, probability theory, geodesy, planetary...
British scientist
John Dalton, English meteorologist and chemist, a pioneer in the development of modern atomic theory. Dalton was born into a Quaker family of tradesmen; his grandfather Jonathan Dalton was a shoemaker,...
Polish-born French physicist
Marie Curie, Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, she was awarded the 1903 Nobel...
English physicist
P.A.M. Dirac, English theoretical physicist who was one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Dirac is most famous for his 1928 relativistic quantum theory of the electron and...
Italian physicist
Guglielmo Marconi, Italian physicist and inventor of a successful wireless telegraph, or radio (1896). In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with German physicist Ferdinand Braun....
British physicist
J.J. Thomson, English physicist who helped revolutionize the knowledge of atomic structure by his discovery of the electron (1897). He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 and was knighted in 1908....
Soviet physicist and dissident
Andrey Sakharov, Soviet nuclear theoretical physicist, an outspoken advocate of human rights, civil liberties, and reform in the Soviet Union as well as rapprochement with noncommunist nations. In 1975...
Russian author and scientist
Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian poet, scientist, and grammarian who is often considered the first great Russian linguistics reformer. He also made substantial contributions to the natural sciences, reorganized...
American physicist
Richard Feynman, American theoretical physicist who was widely regarded as the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in his field in the post-World War II era. Feynman remade quantum electrodynamics—the...
American physicist
Hans Bethe, German-born American theoretical physicist who helped shape quantum physics and increased the understanding of the atomic processes responsible for the properties of matter and of the forces...
American physicist
Edward Teller, Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist who participated in the production of the first atomic bomb (1945) and who led the development of the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen...
Italian physician and physicist
Luigi Galvani, Italian physician and physicist who investigated the nature and effects of what he conceived to be electricity in animal tissue. His discoveries led to the invention of the voltaic pile,...
Dutch scientist and mathematician
Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, who founded the wave theory of light, discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn, and made original contributions to the science...
Russian physicist
Lev Davidovich Landau, Soviet theoretical physicist, one of the founders of the quantum theory of condensed matter whose pioneering research in this field was recognized with the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physics....
American physicist
Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian-born physicist and recipient of the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery in 1925 of the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that in an atom no two electrons can occupy...
American physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist and science administrator, noted as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory (1943–45) during development of the atomic bomb and as director of the Institute...
American professor and inventor
Robert Goddard, American professor and inventor generally acknowledged to be the father of modern rocketry. He published his classic treatise, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in 1919. Goddard was...
British scientist
Arthur Eddington, English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics, investigating the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He also was the first...
French physicist
André-Marie Ampère, French physicist who founded and named the science of electrodynamics, now known as electromagnetism. His name endures in everyday life in the ampere, the unit for measuring electric...
French scientist and mathematician
Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist who was best known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system. Laplace successfully accounted for all...
French physicist
Louis de Broglie, French physicist best known for his research on quantum theory and for predicting the wave nature of electrons. He was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physics. De Broglie was the second...
French physicist
Henri Becquerel, French physicist who discovered radioactivity through his investigations of uranium and other substances. In 1903 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie. He...
American scientist
A.A. Michelson, German-born American physicist who established the speed of light as a fundamental constant and pursued other spectroscopic and metrological investigations. He received the 1907 Nobel Prize...
French mathematician and public official
Gaspard Monge, count de Péluse, French mathematician who invented descriptive geometry, the study of the mathematical principles of representing three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional plane; no...
Belgian scientist
Jan Baptista van Helmont, Flemish physician, philosopher, mystic, and chemist who recognized the existence of discrete gases and identified carbon dioxide. Van Helmont was born into a wealthy family of...
German mathematician
David Hilbert, German mathematician who reduced geometry to a series of axioms and contributed substantially to the establishment of the formalistic foundations of mathematics. His work in 1909 on integral...
British scientist
Lord Rayleigh, English physical scientist who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are basic to the theory of wave propagation in fluids. He received the Nobel Prize...
French engineer and physicist
Sadi Carnot, French scientist who described the Carnot cycle, relating to the theory of heat engines. Carnot was the eldest son of the French Revolutionary figure Lazare Carnot and was named for a medieval...
Austrian physicist
Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian theoretical physicist who contributed to the wave theory of matter and to other fundamentals of quantum mechanics. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with British physicist...
Swiss-Belgian physicist
Auguste Piccard, Swiss-born Belgian physicist notable for his exploration of both the upper stratosphere and the depths of the sea in ships of his own design. In 1930 he built a balloon to study cosmic...
British physicist
Sir Lawrence Bragg, Australian-born British physicist and X-ray crystallographer, discoverer (1912) of the Bragg law of X-ray diffraction, which is basic for the determination of crystal structure. He...
German physicist
Max Born, German physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954 with Walther Bothe for his probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Born came from an upper-middle-class, assimilated,...
American engineer
Jack Kilby, American engineer and one of the inventors of the integrated circuit, a system of interconnected transistors on a single microchip. In 2000 Kilby was a corecipient, with Herbert Kroemer and...
British physicist
Sir William Bragg, pioneer British scientist in solid-state physics who was a joint winner (with his son Sir Lawrence Bragg) of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915 for his research on the determination...
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