Famous Physicists

Famous Physicists Famous Physicists

Classical Period
William Gilbert	1544-1603 English	hypothesized that the Earth is a giant magnet
Galileo Galilei	1564-1642 Italian	performed fundamental observations, experiments, and mathematical analyses in astronomy and physics; discovered mountains and craters on the moon, the phases of Venus, and the four largest satellites of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede
Willebrod Snell	1580-1626 Dutch	discovered law of refraction (Snell's law)
Blaise Pascal	1623-1662 French	discovered that pressure applied to an enclosed fluid is transmitted undiminished to every part of the fluid and to the walls of its container (Pascal's principle)
Christiaan Huygens	1629-1695 Dutch	proposed a simple geometrical wave theory of light, now known as ``Huygen's principle''; pioneered use of the pendulum in clocks
Robert Hooke	1635-1703 English	discovered Hooke's law of elasticity
Sir Isaac Newton	1643-1727 English	developed theories of gravitation and mechanics, and invented differential calculus
Daniel Bernoulli	1700-1782 Swiss	developed the fundamental relationship of fluid flow now known as Bernoulli's principle
Benjamin Franklin	1706-1790 American	the first American physicist; characterized two kinds of electric charge, which he named ``positive'' and ``negative''
Leonard Euler	1707-1783 Swiss	made fundamental contributions to fluid dynamics, lunar orbit theory (tides), and mechanics; also contributed prolifically to all areas of classical mathematics
Henry Cavendish	1731-1810 British	discovered and studied hydrogen; first to measure Newton's gravitational constant; calculated mass and mean density of Earth
Charles Augustin de Coulomb	1736-1806 French	experiments on elasticity, electricity, and magnetism; established experimentally nature of the force between two charges
Joseph-Louis Lagrange	1736-1813 French	developed new methods of analytical mechanics
James Watt	1736-1819 Scottish	invented the modern condensing steam engine and a centrifugal governor
Count Alessandro Volta	1745-1827 Italian	pioneer in study of electricity; invented the first electric battery
Joseph Fourier	1768-1830 French	established the differential equation governing heat diffusion and solved it by devising an infinite series of sines and cosines capable of approximating a wide variety of functions
Thomas Young	1773-1829 British	studied light and color; known for his double-slit experiment that demonstrated the wave nature of light
Jean-Babtiste Biot	1774-1862 French	studied polarization of light; co-discovered that intensity of magnetic field set up by a current flowing through a wire varies inversely with the distance from the wire
André Marie Ampère	1775-1836 French	father of electrodynamics
Amadeo Avogadro	1776-1856 Italian	developed hypothesis that all gases at same volume, pressure, and temperature contain same number of atoms
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss	1777-1855 German	formulated separate electrostatic and electrodynamical laws, including ``Gauss' law''; contributed to development of number theory, differential geometry, potential theory, theory of terrestrial magnetism, and methods of calculating planetary orbits
Hans Christian Oersted	1777-1851 Danish	discovered that a current in a wire can produce magnetic effects
Sir David Brewster	1781-1868 English	deduced ``Brewster's law'' giving the angle of incidence that produces reflected light which is completely polarized; invented the kaleidoscope and the stereoscope, and improved the spectroscope
Augustin-Jean Fresnel	1788-1827 French	studied transverse nature of light waves
Georg Ohm	1789-1854 German	discovered that current flow is proportional to potential difference and inversely proportional to resistance (Ohm's law)
Michael Faraday	1791-1867 English	discovered electromagnetic induction and devised first electrical transformer
Felix Savart	1791-1841 French	co-discovered that intensity of magnetic field set up by a current flowing through a wire varies inversely with the distance from the wire
Sadi Carnot	1796-1832 French	founded the science of thermodynamics
Joseph Henry	1797-1878 American	performed extensive fundamental studies of electromagnetic phenomena; devised first practical electric motor
Christian Doppler	1803-1853 Austrian	experimented with sound waves; derived an expression for the apparent change in wavelength of a wave due to relative motion between the source and observer
Wilhelm E. Weber	1804-1891 German	developed sensitive magnetometers; worked in electrodynamics and the electrical structure of matter
Sir William Hamilton	1805-1865 Irish	developed the principle of least action and the Hamiltonian form of classical mechanics
James Prescott Joule	1818-1889 British	discovered mechanical equivalent of heat
Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau	1819-1896 French	made the first terrestrial measurement of the speed of light; invented one of the first interferometers; took the first pictures of the Sun on daguerreotypes; argued that the Doppler effect with respect to sound should also apply to any wave motion, particularly that of light
Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault	1819-1868 French	accurately measured speed of light; invented the gyroscope; demonstrated the Earth's rotation
Sir George Gabriel Stokes	1819-1903 British	described the motion of viscous fluids by independently discovering the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid mechanics (or hydrodynamics); developed Stokes theorem by which certain surface integrals may be reduced to line integrals; discovered fluorescence
Hermann von Helmholtz	1821-1894 German	developed first law of thermodynamics, a statement of conservation of energy
Rudolf Clausius	1822-1888 German	developed second law of thermodynamics, a statement that the entropy of the Universe always increases
Lord Kelvin (born William Thomson)	1824-1907 British	proposed absolute temperature scale, of essence to development of thermodynamics
Gustav Kirchhoff	1824-1887 German	developed three laws of spectral analysis and three rules of electric circuit analysis; also contributed to optics
Johann Balmer	1825-1898 Swiss	developed empirical formula to describe hydrogen spectrum
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan	1828-1914 British	developed a carbon-filament incandescent light; patented the carbon process for printing photographs in permanent pigment
James Clerk Maxwell	1831-1879 Scottish	propounded the theory of electromagnetism; developed the kinetic theory of gases
Josef Stefan	1835-1893 Austrian	studied blackbody radiation
Ernst Mach	1838-1916 Austrian	studied conditions that occur when an object moves through a fluid at high speed (the ``Mach number'' gives the ratio of the speed of the object to the speed of sound in the fluid); proposed ``Mach's principle,'' which states that the inertia of an object is due to the interaction between the object and the rest of the universe
Josiah Gibbs	1839-1903 American	developed chemical thermodynamics; introduced concepts of free energy and chemical potential
James Dewar	1842-1923 British	liquified nitrogen and invented the Dewar flask, which is critical for low-temperature work
Osborne Reynolds	1842-1912 British	contributed to the fields of hydraulics and hydrodynamics; developed mathematical framework for turbulence and introduced the ``Reynolds number,'' which provides a criterion for dynamic similarity and correct modeling in many fluid-flow experiments
Ludwig Boltzmann	1844-1906 Austrian	developed statistical mechanics and applied it to kinetic theory of gases
Roland Eötvös	1848-1919 Hungarian	demonstrated equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass
Oliver Heaviside	1850-1925 English	contributed to the development of electromagnetism; introduced operational calculus and invented the modern notation for vector calculus; predicted existence of the Heaviside layer (a layer of the Earth's ionosphere)
George Francis FitzGerald	1851-1901 Irish	hypothesized foreshortening of moving bodies (Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction) to explain the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment
John Henry Poynting	1852-1914 British	demonstrated that the energy flow of electromagnetic waves could be calculated by an equation (now called Poynting's vector)
Henri Poincaré	1854-1912 French	founded qualitative dynamics (the mathematical theory of dynamical systems); created topology; contributed to solution of the three-body problem; first described many properties of deterministic chaos; contributed to the development of special relativity
Janne Rydberg	1854-1919 Swedish	analyzed the spectra of many elements; discovered many line series were described by a formula that depended on a universal constant (the Rydberg constant)
Edwin H. Hall	1855-1938 American	discovered the ``Hall effect,'' which occurs when charge carriers moving through a material are deflected because of an applied magnetic field - the deflection results in a potential difference across the side of the material that is transverse to both the magnetic field and the current direction
Heinrich Hertz	1857-1894 German	worked on electromagnetic phenomena; discovered radio waves and the photoelectric effect
Nikola Tesla	1857-1943 Serbian-born American	created alternating current
Nobel Laureates
Johannes van der Waals	1837-1923 Dutch	worked on equations of state for gases and liquids
Lord Rayleigh (born John William Strutt)	1842-1919 British	discovered argon; explained how light scattering is responsible for red color of sunset and blue color of sky
Wilhelm Röntgen	1845-1923 German	discovered and studied x rays
Antoine Henri Becquerel	1852-1908 French	discovered natural radioactivity
Albert A. Michelson	1852-1931 German-born American	devised an interferometer and used it to try to measure Earth's absolute motion; precisely measured speed of light
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz	1853-1928 Dutch	introduced Lorentz transformation equations of special relativity; advanced ideas of relativistic length contraction and relativistic mass increase; contributed to theory of electromagnetism
Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes	1853-1926 Dutch	liquified helium; discovered superconductivity
Sir Joseph John Thomson	1856-1940 British	demonstrated existence of the electron
Max Planck	1858-1947 German	formulated the quantum theory; explained wavelength distribution of blackbody radiation
Pierre Curie	1859-1906 French	studied radioactivity with wife, Marie Curie; discovered piezoelectricity
Sir William Henry Bragg	1862-1942 British	worked on x-ray spectrometry
Philipp von Lenard	1862-1947 German	studied cathode rays and the photoelectric effect
Wilhelm Wien	1864-1928 German	discovered laws governing radiation of heat
Pieter Zeeman	1865-1943 Dutch	discovered splitting of spectral lines in a strong magnetic field
Marie Curie	1867-1934 Polish-born French	discovered radioactivity of thorium; co-discovered radium and polonium
Robert Millikan	1868-1953 American	measured the charge of an electron; introduced term ``cosmic rays'' for the radiation coming from outer space; studied the photoelectric effect
Charles Wilson	1869-1959 British	invented the cloud chamber
Jean Baptiste Perrin	1870-1942 French	experimentally proved that cathode rays were streams of negatively charged particles; experimentally confirmed the correctness of Einstein's theory of Brownian motion, and through his measurements obtained a new determination of Avogadro's number
Lord Ernest Rutherford	1871-1937 New Zealander	theorized existence of the atomic nucleus based on results of the alpha-scattering experiment performed by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden; developed theory of Rutherford scattering (scattering of spinless, pointlike particles from a Coulomb potential)
Guglielmo Marconi	1874-1937 Italian	invented the first practical system of wireless telegraphy
Johannes Stark	1874-1957 German	discovered splitting of spectral lines in a strong electric field
Charles Glover Barkla	1877-1944 British	discovered that every chemical element, when irradiated by x rays, can emit an x-ray spectrum of two line-groups, which he named the K-series and L-series, that are of fundamental importance to understanding atomic structure
Albert Einstein	1879-1955 German-born American	explained Brownian motion and photoelectric effect; contributed to theory of atomic spectra; formulated theories of special and general relativity
Otto Hahn	1879-1968 German	discovered the fission of heavy nuclei
Max von Laue	1879-1960 German	discovered diffraction of x rays by crystals
Sir Owen Richardson	1879-1959 British	discovered the basic law of thermionic emission, now called the Richardson (or Richardson-Dushman) equation, which describes the emission of electrons from a heated conductor
Clinton Joseph Davisson	1881-1958 American	co-discovered electron diffraction
Max Born	1882-1970 German-born British	contributed to creation of quantum mechanics; pioneer in the theory of crystals
Percy Williams Bridgman	1882-1961 American	invented an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures; made many discoveries in high-pressure physics
James Franck	1882-1964 German	experimentally confirmed that atomic energy states are quantized
Victor Franz Hess	1883-1964 Austrian	discovered cosmic radiation
Peter Debye	1884-1966 Dutch-born German	used methods of statistical mechanics to calculate equilibrium properties of solids; contributed to knowledge of molecular structure
Niels Bohr	1885-1962 Danish	contributed to quantum theory and to theory of nuclear reactions and nuclear fission
Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn	1886-1978 Swedish	made important experimental contributions to the field of x-ray spectroscopy
Gustav Hertz	1887-1975 German	experimentally confirmed that atomic energy states are quantized
Erwin Schrödinger	1887-1961 Austrian	contributed to creation of quantum mechanics; formulated the Schrödinger wave equation
Sir Chandrasekhara Raman	1888-1970 Indian	studied light scattering and discovered the Raman effect
Otto Stern	1888-1969 German-born American	contributed to development of the molecular beam method; discovered the magnetic moment of the proton
Frits Zernike	1888-1966 Dutch	invented the phase-contrast microscope, a type of microscope widely used for examining specimens such as biological cells and tissues
Sir William Lawrence Bragg	1890-1971 British	worked on crystal structure and x rays
Walther Bothe	1891-1957 German	devised a coincidence counter for studying cosmic rays; demonstrated validity of energy-momentum conservation at the atomic scale
Sir James Chadwick	1891-1974 British	discovered the neutron
Sir Edward Appleton	1892-1965 English	discovered the layer of the Earth's atmosphere, called the Appleton layer, which is the part of the ionosphere having the highest concentration of free electrons and is the most useful for radio transmission
Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie	1892-1987 French	predicted wave properties of the electron
Arthur Compton	1892-1962 American	discovered the increase in wavelength of x rays when scattered by an electron
Sir George Paget Thomson	1892-1975 British	co-discovered electron diffraction
Harold Clayton Urey	1893-1981 American	discovered deuterium
Pjotr Leonidovich Kapitsa	1894-1984 Soviet	heralded a new era of low-temperature physics by inventing a device for producing liquid helium without previous cooling with liquid hydrogen; demonstrated that Helium II is a quantum superfluid
Igor Y. Tamm	1895-1971 Soviet	co-developed the theoretical interpretation of the radiation of electrons moving through matter faster than the speed of light (the ``Cerenkov effect''), and developed the theory of showers in cosmic rays
Robert S. Mulliken	1896-1986 American	introduced the theoretical concept of the molecular orbital, which led to a new understanding of the chemical bond and the electronic structure of molecules
Lord Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett	1897-1974 British	developed an automatic Wilson cloud chamber; discovered electron-positron pair production in cosmic rays
Sir John Cockcroft	1897-1967 British	co-invented the first particle accelerator
Irène Joliot-Curie	1897-1956 French	co-discovered artificial radioactivity
Isador Isaac Rabi	1898-1988 Austrian-born American	developed the resonance technique for measuring the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei
Frédéric Joliot-Curie	1900-1958 French	co-discovered artificial radioactivity
Dennis Gabor	1900-1979 Hungarian	invented and developed the holographic method whereby it is possible to record and display a three-dimensional display of an object
Wolfgang Pauli	1900-1958 Austrian-born American	discovered the exclusion principle; suggested the existence of the neutrino
Enrico Fermi	1901-1954 Italian-born American	performed experiments leading to first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction; developed a theory of beta decay that introduced the weak interaction; derived the statistical properties of gases that obey the Pauli exclusion principle
Werner Heisenberg	1901-1976 German	contributed to creation of quantum mechanics; introduced the ``uncertainty principle'' and the concept of exchange forces
Ernest Orlando Lawrence	1901-1958 American	invented the cyclotron
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac	1902-1984 British	helped found quantum electrodynamics; predicted the existence of antimatter by combining quantum mechanics with special relativity
Alfred Kastler	1902-1984 French	discovered and developed optical methods for studying the Hertzian resonances that are produced when atoms interact with radio waves or microwaves
Eugene Wigner	1902-1995 Hungarian-born American	contributed to theoretical atomic and nuclear physics; introduced concept of the nuclear cross section
Cecil F. Powell	1903-1969 British	developed the photographic emulsion method of studying nuclear processes; discovered the charged pion
Ernest Walton	1903-1995 Irish	co-invented the first particle accelerator
Pavel A. Cherenkov	1904-1990 Soviet	discovered the ``Cerenkov effect'' whereby light is emitted by a particle passing through a medium at a speed greater than that of light in the medium
Carl David Anderson	1905-1991 American	discovered the positron and the muon
Felix Bloch	1905-1983 Swiss-born American	contributed to development of the NMR technique; measured the magnetic moment of the neutron; contributed to the theory of metals
Sir Nevill F. Mott	1905-1996 British	contributed to theoretical condensed-matter physics by applying quantum theory to complex phenomena in solids; calculated cross section for relativistic Coulomb scattering
Emilio Segrè	1905-1989 Italian-born American	co-discovered the antiproton; discovered technetium
Hans Bethe	1906-2005 German-born American	contributed to theoretical nuclear physics, especially concerning the mechanism for energy production in stars
Maria Goeppert-Mayer	1906-1972 German-born American	advanced shell model of nuclear structure
Ernst Ruska	1906-1988 German	designed the first electron microscope
Shin-Ichiro Tomonaga	1906-1979 Japanese	co-developed quantum electrodynamics
J. Hans D. Jensen	1907-1973 German	advanced shell model of nuclear structure
Edwin M. McMillan	1907-1991 American	made discoveries concerning the transuranium elements
Hideki Yukawa	1907-1981 Japanese	predicted existence of the pion
John Bardeen	1908-1991 American	co-discovered the transistor effect; developed theory of superconductivity
Il'ja M. Frank	1908-1990 Soviet	co-developed the theoretical interpretation of the radiation of electrons moving through matter faster than the speed of light (the ``Cerenkov effect''), and carried out experimental investigations of pair creation by gamma rays
Lev Landau	1908-1968 Soviet	contributed to condensed matter theory on phenomena of superfluidity and superconductivity
Subramanyan Chandrasekhar	1910-1995 Indian-born American	made important theoretical contributions concerning the structure and evolution of stars, especially white dwarfs
William Shockley	1910-1989 American	co-discovered the transistor effect
Luis Walter Alvarez	1911-1988 American	constructed huge bubble chambers and discovered many short-lived hadrons; advanced the impact theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs
William Fowler	1911-1995 American	studied nuclear reactions of astrophysical significance; developed, with others, a theory of the formation of chemical elements in the universe
Polykarp Kusch	1911-1993 American	experimentally established that the electron has an anomalous magnetic moment and made a precision determination of its magnitude
Edward Mills Purcell	1912-1997 American	developed method of nuclear resonance absorption that permitted the absolute determination of nuclear magnetic moments; co-discovered a line in the galactic radiospectrum caused by atomic hydrogen
Glenn T. Seaborg	1912-1999 American	co-discovered plutonium and all further transuranium elements through element 102
Willis E. Lamb, Jr.	1913-2008 American	made discoveries concerning fine structure of hydrogen
Robert Hofstadter	1915-1990 American	measured charge distributions in atomic nuclei with high-energy electron scattering; measured the charge and magnetic-moment distributions in the proton and neutron
Norman F. Ramsey, Jr.	1915-2011 American	developed the separated oscillatory fields method, which is the basis of the cesium atomic clock (our present time standard); co-invented the hydrogen maser
Clifford G. Shull	1915-2001 American	developed a neutron scattering technique in which a neutron diffraction pattern is produced that may be used to determine the atomic structure of a material
Charles H. Townes	1915-2015 American	created first maser using ammonia to produce coherent microwave radiation
Francis Crick	1916-2004 English	co-proposed the double-helix structure of DNA
Maurice Wilkins	1916-2004 British	investigated the structure of DNA
Bertram N. Brockhouse	1918-2003 Canadian	developed the technique of neutron spectroscopy for studies of condensed matter
Richard P. Feynman	1918-1988 American	co-developed quantum electrodynamics; created a new formalism for practical calculations by introducing a graphical method called Feynman diagrams
Frederick Reines	1918-1998 American	established, together with Clyde L. Cowan, Jr., the existence of the electron antineutrino by detecting them using a reactor experiment
Julian Schwinger	1918-1994 American	co-developed quantum electrodynamics
Kai M. Siegbahn	1918-2007 Swedish	contributed to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy
Nicolaas Bloembergen	1920- Dutch-born American	contributed to the development of laser spectroscopy
Owen Chamberlain	1920-2006 American	co-discovered the antiproton
Yoichiro Nambu	1921-2015 Japanese-born American	contributed to elementary particle theory; recognized the role played by spontaneous symmetry-breaking in analogy with superconductivity theory; formulated QCD (quantum chromodynamics), the gauge theory of color
Andrei Sakharov	1921-1989 Russian	father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb; awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle for human rights, for disarmament, and for cooperation between all nations
Arthur L. Schawlow	1921-1999 American	contributed to the development of laser spectroscopy
Jack Steinberger	1921- German-born American	made many important discoveries in particle physics; co-discovered the neutral pion via photoproduction; co-discovered the muon neutrino
Nikolai Basov	1922-2001 Soviet	worked in quantum electronics; independently worked out theoretical basis of the maser
Aage Bohr	1922-2009 Danish	contributed to theoretical understanding of collective motion in nuclei
Leon Lederman	1922- American	contributed to the discovery of the muon neutrino and the bottom quark
Chen Ning Yang	1922- Chinese-born American	co-proposed parity violation in weak interactions
Val Logsdon Fitch	1923-2015 American	co-discovered that decays of neutral kaons sometime violate CP conservation
Jack S. Kilby	1923-2005 American	invented the monolithic integrated circuit - the microchip - which laid the foundation for the field of microelectronics; co-invented the hand held calculator
Willard S. Boyle	1924-2011 Canadian	co-invented the CCD (charge-coupled device)
Georges Charpak	1924-2010 French	invented the multiwire proportional chamber
Roy J. Glauber	1925- American	made important contributions to the theoretical understanding of quantum optics and high-energy collisions
Simon van der Meer	1925-2011 Dutch	contributed to experiments that led to the discovery of the carriers (W± and Z°) of the weak interaction
Donald A. Glaser	1926-2013 American	invented the bubble chamber
Henry W. Kendall	1926-1999 American	co-discovered, through investigations of deep-inelastic electron scattering, clear signs that there exists an inner structure (quarks and gluons) in the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus
Ben Mottelson	1926- American	contributed to theoretical understanding of collective motion in nuclei
Tsung-Dao Lee	1926- Chinese-born American	co-proposed parity violation in weak interactions
Abdus Salam	1926-1996 Pakistani	co-developed gauge field theory of the electroweak interaction; suggested that the proton might be unstable
K. Alexander Müller	1927- Swiss	co-discovered the first ceramic superconductors
Martin L. Perl	1927-2014 American	discovered the tau lepton
Murray Gell-Mann	1929- American	advanced an explanation of strange particles; predicted the existence of the Omega^- particle; postulated existence of quarks; founded the study of QCD
Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer	1929-2011 German	experimented with resonance absorption of gamma radiation; discovered ``Mössbauer effect,'' the recoilless emission of gamma rays by nuclei
Richard E. Taylor	1929- Canadian	co-discovered, through investigations of deep-inelastic electron scattering, clear signs that there exists an inner structure (quarks and gluons) in the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus
Leon N. Cooper	1930- American	contributed to condensed matter theory on phenomena of superconductivity
Jerome I. Friedman	1930- American	co-discovered, through investigations of deep-inelastic electron scattering, clear signs that there exists an inner structure (quarks and gluons) in the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus
George E. Smith	1930- American	co-invented the CCD (charge-coupled device)
James W. Cronin	1931- American	co-discovered that decays of neutral kaons sometime violate CP conservation
David M. Lee	1931- American	co-discovered that the isotope Helium-3 becomes a quantum superfluid near absolute zero
Burton Richter	1931- American	carried out an experiment leading to the discovery of charmonium
John Robert Schrieffer	1931- American	contributed to condensed matter theory on phenomena of superconductivity
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes	1932-2007 French	developed theories in condensed matter physics applicable to liquid crystals and polymers
Sheldon Glashow	1932- American	co-developed gauge field theory of the electroweak interaction
Melvin Schwartz	1932-2006 American	proposed that it should be possible to produce and use a beam of neutrinos; co-discovered the muon neutrino
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji	1933- French	developed methods, with his colleagues, of using laser light to cool helium atoms to a temperature of about 0.18 µK and capturing the chilled atoms in a trap
Charles K. Kao	1933- Chinese-born British-American	pioneer in the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications
Arno A. Penzias	1933- German-born American	co-discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation
Heinrich Rohrer	1933-2013 Swiss	co-designed the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), a type of microscope in which a fine conducting probe is held close the surface of a sample
Steven Weinberg	1933- American	co-developed gauge field theory of the electroweak interaction
Carlo Rubbia	1934- Italian	contributed to experiments that led to the discovery of the carriers (W± and Z°) of the weak interaction
Robert W. Wilson	1936- American	co-discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation
Samuel C. C. Ting	1936- American	carried out an experiment leading to the discovery of charmonium
Kenneth Wilson	1936-2013 American	invented renormalization group methods to develop a theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions; contributed to solving QCD using lattice gauge theory
Robert C. Richardson	1937-2013 American	co-discovered that the isotope Helium-3 becomes a quantum superfluid near absolute zero
Albert Fert	1938- French	co-discovered Giant Magnetoresistance, which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks
Peter Grünberg	1939- German	co-discovered Giant Magnetoresistance, which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks
Brian Josephson	1940- Welsh	contributed to theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier
Toshihide Maskawa	1940- Japanese	contributed to theoretical understanding of CP-violation; co-discovered the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks
David J. Gross	1941- American	co-discovered ``asymptotic freedom'' in non-Abelian gauge theories; contributed to the development of string theory
Klaus von Klitzing	1943- German	discovered the quantized Hall effect
Makato Kobayashi	1944- Japanese	contributed to theoretical understanding of CP-violation; co-discovered the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks
Douglas D. Osheroff	1945- American	co-discovered that the isotope Helium-3 becomes a quantum superfluid near absolute zero
Gerard t' Hooft	1946- Dutch	contributed to theoretical understanding of gauge theories in elementary particle physics, quantum gravity and black holes, and fundamental aspects of quantum physics
Gerd Binnig	1947- German	co-designed the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), a type of microscope in which a fine conducting probe is held close the surface of a sample
Steven Chu	1948- American	developed the Doppler cooling method of using laser light (optical molasses) to cool gases and capturing the chilled atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT)
William D. Phillips	1948- American	developed, with his colleagues, a device called a Zeeman slower, with which he could slow down and capture atoms in a purely magnetic trap
Hugh David Politzer	1949- American	co-discovered ``asymptotic freedom'' in non-Abelian gauge theories; co-predicted the existence of charmonium - the bound state of a charm quark and its antiparticle
Johannes Georg Bednorz	1950- German	co-discovered the first ceramic superconductors
Robert Laughlin	1950- American	developed a theory of quantum fluids that explained the fractional quantum Hall effect
Frank Wilczek	1951- American	co-discovered ``asymptotic freedom'' in non-Abelian gauge theories; contributed to the study of ``anyons'' (particle-like excitations in two-dimensional systems that obey ``fractional statistics'')
Andre Geim	1958- Dutch-Russian	co-discovered a simple method for isolating single atomic layers of graphite, known as graphene
Konstantin Novoselov	1974- Russian-British	co-discovered a simple method for isolating single atomic layers of graphite, known as graphene
Others
Wallace Clement Sabine	1868-1919 American	founded the science of architectural acoustics
Arnold Sommerfeld	1868-1951 German	generalized the circular orbits of the atomic Bohr model to elliptical orbits; introduced the magnetic quantum number; used statistical mechanics to explain the electronic properties of metals
Lise Meitner	1878-1968 Austrian-born Swedish	co-discovered the element protactinium and studied the effects of neutron bombardment on uranium; introduced term ``fission'' for splitting the atomic nucleus
Paul Ehrenfest	1880-1933 Austrian	applied quantum mechanics to rotating bodies; helped develop the modern statistical theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics
Theodor von Kármán	1881-1963 Hungarian-born American	provided major contributions to our understanding of fluid mechanics, turbulence theory, and supersonic flight
Walther Meissner	1882-1974 German	co-discovered the ``Meissner effect'', whereby a superconductor expells a magnetic field
Emmy Noether	1882-1935 German	developed Noether's theorem, which relates the continuous symmetries of a physical system to specific conservation laws
Hans Geiger	1883-1945 German	helped measure charge-to-mass ratio for alpha particles; invented Geiger counter for detecting ionizing particles
Hermann Weyl	1885-1955 German	attempted to incorporate electromagnetism into general relativity; evolved the concept of continuous groups using matrix representations and applied group theory to quantum mechanics
Arthur Jeffrey Dempster	1886-1950 Canadian-born American	discovered the isotope uranium-235
Henry Moseley	1887-1915 British	developed the modern form of the period table of elements based on their atomic numbers
Sir Robert Watson-Watt	1892-1973 Scottish	developed radar
Satyendra Bose	1894-1974 Indian	worked out statistical method of handling bosons (a group of particles named in his honor)
Oskar Klein	1894-1977 Swedish	introduced the physical notion of extra dimensions that helped develop the Kaluza-Klein theory; co-developed the Klein-Gordon equation describing the relativistic behavior of spinless particles; co-developed the Klein-Nishina formula describing relativistic electron-photon scattering
Vladimir A. Fock	1898-1974 Russian	made fundamental contributions to quantum theory; invented the Hartree-Fock approximation method and the notion of Fock space
Leo Szilard	1898-1964 Hungarian-born American	first suggested possibility of a nuclear chain reaction
Pierre Auger	1899-1993 French	discovered the Auger effect whereby an electron is ejected from an atom without the emission of an x-ray or gamma-ray photon as the result of the de-excitation of an excited electron within the atom; discovered cosmic-ray air showers
Ernst Ising	1900-1998 German-born American	developed the Ising model of ferromagnetism
Fritz London	1900-1954 German-born American	co-developed the phenomenological theory of superconductivity; co-developed the first quantum-mechanical treatment of the hydrogen molecule; determined that the electromagnetic gauge is the phase of the Schrödinger wave function
Charles Francis Richter	1900-1985 American	established the Richter scale for the measurement of earthquake intensity
George E. Uhlenbeck	1900-1988 Dutch	co-discovered that the electron has an intrinsic spin
Robert J. Van de Graaf	1901-1967 American	invented the Van de Graaf electrostatic generator
Samuel Abraham Goudsmit	1902-1978 Dutch	co-discovered that the electron has an intrinsic spin
Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov	1903-1960 Soviet	headed the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb programs
John von Neumann	1903-1957 Hungarian-born American	formulated a fully quantum mechanical generalization of statistical mechanics
George Gamow	1904-1968 Russian-born American	first suggested hydrogen fusion as source of solar energy
J. Robert Oppenheimer	1904-1967 American	headed Manhattan Project to develop the nuclear fission bomb
Sir Rudolf Peierls	1907-1995 German-born British	many contributions in theoretical physics, including an improved calculation of the critical mass needed to make a fission bomb
Edward Teller	1908-2003 Hungarian-born American	helped develop atomic and hydrogen bombs
Victor F. Weisskopf	1908-2002 Austrian-born American	made theoretical contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear structure, and elementary particle physics
Homi Jehangir Bhabha	1909-1966 Indian	initiated nuclear research programs in India; carried out experiments in cosmic rays; calculated cross section for elastic electron-positron scattering
Nikolai N. Bogolubov	1909-1992 Russian	theoretical physicist and mathematician who contributed to the microscopic theory of superfluidity; also contributed to theory of elementary particles, including the S-matrix and dispersion relations, and to nonlinear mechanics and the general theory of dynamical systems
Maurice Goldhaber	1911-2011 Austrian-born American	first measured (with James Chadwick) an accurate mass for the neutron; participated in experiments proving that beta rays are identical to atomic electrons; developed (with Edward Teller) the concept of coherent oscillations of protons and neutrons in nuclei leading to the giant dipole resonance; performed an experiment showing that neutrinos are created with negative helicity, which provided conclusive evidence for the V-A theory of weak interactions; participated in experiments that obtained an upper limit on the rate of proton decay and that provided evidence for neutrino oscillations
Chien-Shiung Wu	1912-1997 Chinese-born American	experimentally proved that parity is not conserved in nuclear beta decay
Henry Primakoff	1914-1983 Russian-born American	co-developed the theory of spin waves; first described the process that became known as the ``Primakoff effect'' (the coherent photoproduction of neutral mesons in the electric field of an atomic nucleus); contributed to understanding of various manifestations of the weak interaction, including muon capture, double-beta decay, and the interaction of neutrinos with nuclei
Robert Rathbun Wilson	1914-2000 American	driving force behind creation of Fermilab and Cornell University's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies; a leader in the formation of the Federation of Atomic Scientists; did extensive measurements of kaon and pion photoproduction in which he made the first observation of a new state of the nucleon, N(1440)
Vitaly L. Ginzburg	1916-2009 Russian	contributed to theory of superconductivity and theory of high-energy processes in astrophysics; co-discovered transition radiation, emitted when charged particles traverse interface between two different media
Robert E. Marshak	1916-1993 American	contributed to theoretical particle physics; independently proposed (with George Sudarshan) the V-A theory of weak interactions; developed explanation of how shock waves behave under conditions of extremely high temperatures
Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky	1919-2007 German-born American	co-discovered the neutral pion via photoproduction; studied gamma rays from pi^- captured in hydrogen and first measured the ``Panofsky ratio''
Robert V. Pound	1919-2010 Canadian-born American	used the Mössbauer effect to measure (with Glen A. Rebka, Jr.) the gravitational redshift predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity
Vernon W. Hughes	1921-2003 American	participated in experiments to test the fundamental QED interaction using the muonium atom
Freeman J. Dyson	1923- British-born American	made many important contribututions to quantum field theory, including the demonstration that the Feynman rules are direct and rigorous consequences of quantum field theory; advocated exploration of the solar system by humans; speculated on the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations
Calvin F. Quate	1923- American	made pioneering contributions to nanoscale measurement science through the development and application of scanning probe microscropes
Lincoln Wolfenstein	1923-2015 American	contributed to theory of weak interactions, especially concerning neutrino masses, the origin of CP violation, lepton number violation, the solar neutrino problem, and Higgs boson properties
James E. Zimmerman	1923-1999 American	co-invented the radio-frequency superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), a practical magnetometer/amplifier with extreme sensitivity limited only by the uncertainty principle
Felix Hans Boehm	1924- Swiss-born American	pioneered the use of nuclear-physics techniques for exploring fundamental questions concerning the weak interactions and the nature of neutrinos
Ernest M. Henley	1924- German-born American	contributed to the theoretical understanding of how symmetries place restrictions on theories and models; the connection of quarks and gluons to nucleon-meson degrees of freedom; the changes that occur when hadrons are placed in a nuclear medium
Benoit Mandelbrot	1924-2010 French-American	developed theory of fractals
D. Allan Bromley	1926-2005 Canadian	served as Science Advisor to the President of the United States; carried out pioneering studies of nuclear structure and dynamics; considered the father of modern heavy-ion science
Sidney D. Drell	1926- American	made important theoretical contributions to particle physics and quantum electrodynamics; specialist in arms control and national security
Albert V. Crewe	1927-2009 British-born American	developed the first practical scanning electron microscope
John Stewart Bell	1928-1990 Irish	proved the inherent nonlocality of quantum mechanics
Stanley Mandelstam	1928-2016 South African-born American	contributed to the modern understanding of relativistic particle scattering through his representation of the analytic properties of scattering amplitudes in the form of double dispersion relations (Mandelstam representation); applied path-integral quantization methods to string theory
Peter Higgs	1929- British	proposed with others the Higgs mechanism by which particles are endowed with mass by interacting with the Higgs field, which is carried by Higgs bosons
Akito Arima	1930- Japanese	co-developed the Interacting Boson Model of the atomic nucleus
Mildred S. Dresselhaus	1930- American	contributed to the advance of solid-state physics, especially involving carbon-based materials, including fullerenes and nanotubes (a.k.a., buckyballs and buckytubes)
Joel Lebowitz	1930- Czech-born American	contributed to condensed matter theory, especially involving statistical mechanics: phase transitions; derivation of hydrodynamical equations from microscopic kinetics; statistical mechanics of plasmas
John P. Schiffer	1930- Hungarian-born American	studied nuclear structure, pion absorption in nuclei, ion traps and crystalline beams, heavy-ion physics, and the Mössbauer effect
T. Kenneth Fowler	1931- American	contributed to the theory of plasma physics and magnetic fusion
Tullio Regge	1931-2014 Italian	developed the theory of Regge trajectories by investigating the asymptotic behavior of potential-scattering processes through the analytic continuation of the angular momentum to the complex plane
Oscar Wallace Greenberg	1932- American	introduced color as a quantum number to resolve the quark statistics paradox
John Dirk Walecka	1932- American	contributed to the theoretical understanding of the atomic nucleus as a relativistic quantum many-body system; provided theoretical guidance in exploiting electromagnetic and weak probes of the nucleus
Daniel Kleppner	1932- American	co-invented the hydrogen maser; explores quantum chaos by optical spectroscopy of Rydberg atoms
Jeffrey Goldstone	1933- British	contributed to understanding the role of massless particles in spontaneous symmetry breaking (Goldstone bosons)
John N. Bahcall	1934-2005 American	made important theoretical contributions to understanding solar neutrinos and quasars
James D. Bjorken	1934- American	formulated the scaling law for deep inelastic processes and made other outstanding contributions to particle physics and quantum field theory
Ludvig Faddeev	1934- Russian	made many theoretical contributions in quantum field theory and mathematical physics; developed the Faddeev equation in connection with the three-body system; co-developed the Faddeev-Popov covariant prescription for quantizing non-Abelian gauge theories; contributed to the quantum inverse scattering method and the quantum theory of solitons
David J. Thouless	1934- Scottish-born American	contributed to condensed matter theory, especially vortices in superfluids, the quantum Hall effect, and topological quantum numbers
Peter A. Carruthers	1935-1997 American	contributed to several areas of theoretical physics, including condensed matter, quantum optics, elementary particle physics, and field theory; statistics and dynamics of galaxy distributions
Gordon A. Baym	1935- American	contributed to several areas of theoretical physics, including condensed matter, low-temperature physics including superfluidity, statistical physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics; made advances in quantum statistical mechanics and the study of neutron stars
Stanley J. Brodsky	1940- American	contributed to theoretical understanding of high-energy physics, especially the quark-gluon structure of hadrons in quantum chromodynamics
Haim Harari	1940- Israeli	predicted the existence of the top quark, which he named; also named the bottom quark
Kip S. Thorne	1940- American	contributed to theoretical understanding of black holes and gravitational radiation; co-founded the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory Project (LIGO)
Francesco Iachello	1942- Italian-born American	co-developed the Interacting Boson Model of the atomic nucleus; introduced supersymmetry in nuclei (1980); developed the Vibron Model of molecules (1981)
Gabriele Veneziano	1942- Italian	first introduced string theory to describe the strong force without using quantum fields
Chris Quigg	1944- American	contributed to theoretical understanding of high-energy collisions and the fundamental interactions of elementary particles
Thomas A. Witten	1944- American	contributed to theory of soft condensed matter; structured fluids
Howard Georgi	1947- American	co-developed the SU(5) and SO(10) grand unified theories of all elementary particle forces; developed the modern QCD-inspired quark model; helped develop the modern theory of perturbative QCD
Nathan Isgur	1947-2001 American	contributed to understanding the quark structure of baryon resonances; discovered a new symmetry of nature that describes the behavior of heavy quarks
Edward Witten	1951- American	made fundamental contributions to manifold theory, string theory, and the theory of supersymmetric quantum mechanics
Ralph Charles Merkle	1952- American	leading theorist of molecular nanotechnology; invented the encryption technology that allows secure translations over the internet
Kim Eric Drexler	1955- American	father of nanotechnology
Nathan Seiberg	1956- Israeli American	contributed to the development of supersymmetric field theories and string theories in various dimensions
Stephen Wolfram	1959- British	created Mathematica, the first modern computer algebra system; contributed to development of complexity theory