Some of the most famous physicists and their contributions to science are explained in this section. Learn famous physicists, such as Albert Einstein.
Tyndall, John (1820-1893), a British physicist. Tyndall was one of the most eminent lecturers and writers of his day, especially noted for his efforts to popularize science. See more »
Albert Einstein was a pretty smart guy. When you look up the word "genius" in the dictionary, so the saying goes, it's a pretty safe bet you'll see Einstein's mug. He introduced concepts that we're still figuring out how to explain.
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Sir Isaac Newton: arguably the greatest scientist of all time. He gave us the laws of motion and universal gravitation -- which provided much of the foundation for modern science.
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After Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking is probably the most famous physicist of all time. But most of us are probably more familiar with his disability (and his amazing ability to overcome it) than we are with his actual theorems.
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Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking: If only these two great minds had lived at the same time, instead of overlapping for only 13 years. But maybe it's a good thing they never knew each other.
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One was a celebrated author, the other a famed physicist. What the two shared was a public exposure of their religious beliefs. Big E had an on-again, off-again relationship with God, while C.S. was an avowed atheist during his early years.
See more »Salam, Abdus (1926-1996) was a Pakistani physicist. He won a share of the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions in developing a theory that unifies the weak nuclear force within atoms and the force of electromagnetism.
See more »Zewail, Ahmed Hassan (1946-) is an Egyptian-born American chemist who won the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his experiments showing how molecules change during chemical reactions.
See more »Heeger, Alan Jay (1936- ) is an American physicist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
See more »Prokhorov, Alexander Mikhailovich (1916-2002) was a Russian physicist who developed masers, a forerunner of lasers, with Russian physicist Nikolai Gennadievich Basov.
See more »Kastler, Alfred (1902-1984) was a French physicist who won the 1966 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances within atoms.
See more »Ampere, Andre Marie (1775-1836), a French mathematician and physicist, noted for his work in electromagnetism.
See more »Anderson, Carl David (1905-1991), a United States physicist noted for his studies of cosmic rays.
See more »Angstrom, Anders Jonas (1814-1874), a Swedish physicist. Angstrom made a detailed map of the sun's spectrum.
See more »Arago, Dominique Franois Jean (1786-1853), a French physicist and astronomer. He made important contributions in electromagnetism and in optics, especially through his experiments on the polarization of light and the wave theory of light.
See more »Penzias, Arno Allan (1933-) is a German-born American astrophysicist who discovered and studied cosmic microwave background radiation.
See more »Schawlow, Arthur Leonard (1921-1999) was an American physicist. He helped develop the laser, a device that produces a very powerful beam of light.
See more »Schuster, Arthur (1851-1934) was a German-born British physicist. He contributed to the discovery of the electron.
See more »Bardeen, John (1908-1991), a United States physicist. Bardeen twice shared the Nobel Prize in Physics: in 1956 for work that led to the invention of the transistor and in 1972 for work in explaining superconductivity.
See more »Becquerel, Antoine Henri (1852-1908), a French physicist. In 1896, while working with uranium, he discovered radioactivity.
See more »Mottelson, Ben Roy (1926-), an American-born physicist, shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in physics with Aage Niels Bohr and James Rainwater for devising a theory that combined the earlier liquid-drop and shell models of the atomic nucleus.
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