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People
Scientists, inventors, and mathematicians
Physics and astronomy
Physics and astronomy
Early modern
Modern
Astronomy
Aage Bohr
Danish physicist (1922–2009)
Abdul Qadeer Khan
Pakistani nuclear engineer (1936–2021)
Abdus Salam
Theoretical physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics recipient
Adam Riess
American Nobel laureate and astrophysicist
Albert A. Michelson
American physicist (1852 – 1931)
Albert Einstein
German-born theoretical physicist (1879–1955)
Albert Fert
French physicist, Nobel laureate in physics
Aleksandr Popov (physicist)
Russian physicist (1859–1906)
Alexander Prokhorov
Australian-born Soviet-Russian physicist
Alexei Abrikosov (physicist)
Soviet, Russian and American theoretical physicist
Alfred Kastler
French physicist
Allan Sandage
American astronomer
Amedeo Avogadro
Italian scientist
Anders Celsius
Swedish astronomer and physicist
Anders Jonas Ångström
Swedish physicist (1814–1874)
Andre Geim
Russian-born Dutch-British physicist
Andrea M. Ghez
American astronomer
Andrei Sakharov
Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist
André-Marie Ampère
French physicist and mathematician (1775–1836)
Annie Jump Cannon
American astronomer
Annie S. D. Maunder
British astronomer
Anthony James Leggett
British physicist (born 1938)
Antony Hewish
British radio astronomer
Arno Allan Penzias
American physicist
Arnold Sommerfeld
German theoretical physicist
Arthur Ashkin
American physicist
Arthur B. McDonald
Canadian physicist
Arthur Compton
American physicist
Arthur Eddington
British astrophysicist (1882–1944)
Arthur Leonard Schawlow
20th-century American physicist; co-inventor of the laser
Augustin-Jean Fresnel
18/19th-century French civil engineer and optical physicist
Barry Barish
American physicist
Ben Roy Mottelson
Danish nuclear physicist
Benjamin Banneker
Free African-American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer
Bertram Brockhouse
Canadian physicist, Nobel laureate (1918–2003)
Brian Josephson
Welsh theoretical physicist (born 1940)
Brian Schmidt
American-born Australian astrophysicist
Bruno Rossi
Italian experimental physicist
Burton Richter
American physicist
C. F. Powell
British physicist
C. T. R. Wilson
Scottish physicist and meteorologist (1869-1959) –
C. V. Raman
Indian physicist (1888–1970)
Carl David Anderson
American physicist
Carl Sagan
American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science educator
Carl Wieman
Nobel prize winning US physicist
Carlo Rubbia
Italian particle physicist and Nobel Prize
Caroline Herschel
German-British astronomer (1750–1848)
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
British-born American astronomer
Charles Édouard Guillaume
Swiss physicist (1861-1938)
Charles Glover Barkla
English physicist
Charles H. Townes
American physicist (1915–2015)
Charles K. Kao
Chinese scientist and Nobel Prize Laureate (1933–2018)
Charles Messier
18th- and 19th-century French astronomer
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
French physicist
Chien-Shiung Wu
Chinese American experimental physicist
Christiaan Huygens
17th-century Dutch mathematician and natural philosopher
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
French physicist
Clifford Shull
American physicist (1915–2001)
Clinton Davisson
American physicist
Clyde Tombaugh
American astronomer (1906–1997)
Daniel C. Tsui
Chinese-American physicist, Nobel laureate
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
German-Polish physicist and engineer
David Brewster
British astronomer and mathematician
David Gross
American particle physicist and string theorist
David J. Wineland
American physicist
David Lee (physicist)
Physicist and Nobel Prize winner from the United States
David Thouless
British physicist
Dennis Gabor
Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography
Didier Queloz
Swiss astronomer (born 1966)
Donna Strickland
Canadian physicist, engineer, and Nobel laureate
Douglas Hartree
British mathematician and physicist
Douglas Osheroff
American physicist
Duncan Haldane
Professor of physics at Princeton University
Edmond Halley
English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist
Edward Appleton
English atmospheric physicist (1892–1965)
Edward Teller
American physicist (1908–2003)
Edward W. Morley
American physical chemist
Edward Witten
American theoretical physicist
Edwin E. Salpeter
Austrian–Australian–American astrophysicist (1924–2008)
Edwin Hubble
American astronomer
Ejnar Hertzsprung
Danish chemist and astronomer
Émilie du Châtelet
French mathematician, physicist, and author
Enrico Fermi
Italian-American physicist
Eric Allin Cornell
American physicist
Ernest Lawrence
American nuclear physicist
Ernest Rutherford
New Zealand atomic and nuclear physicist (1871–1937)
Ernest Walton
Irish physicist and Nobel laureate (1903-1995)
Ernst Chladni
German physicist, mathematician and musician
Ernst Mach
Austrian physicist and university educator (1838–1916)
Ernst Ruska
German physicist
Erwin Schrödinger
Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist (1887–1961)
Eugene Wigner
Hungarian-American mathematician and Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Evangelista Torricelli
Italian physicist, inventor of the barometer
Felix Bloch
Swiss physicist
François Englert
Belgian theoretical physicist
Frank Wilczek
American physicist and Nobel laureate
Fred Hoyle
British astronomer (1915–2001)
Frederick Reines
American physicist (1918-1998)
Freeman Dyson
British theoretical physicist and mathematician (1923-2020)
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
German astronomer and mathematician
Frits Zernike
Dutch physicist (1888–1966)
Fritz Zwicky
Swiss astronomer
G. I. Taylor
British physicist and mathematician (1886–1975)
G. N. Ramachandran
Indian physicist (1922–2001)
Gabriel Lippmann
French physicist born in Luxembourg
Galileo Galilei
Florentine physicist and astronomer (1564–1642)
Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis
French mathematician, mechanical engineer, and scientist
Georg Bednorz
German physicist
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
German scientist and satirist (1742-1799)
Georg Ohm
German mathematician and physicist (1789–1854)
George E. Smith
Nobel prize winning American physicist
George Ellery Hale
American solar astronomer
George Paget Thomson
British physicist and Nobel laureate in physics
George Smoot
American astrophysicist and cosmologist
Georges Charpak
French physicist (1924-2010)
Georges Lemaître
Belgian scientist and priest (1894-1966)
Gerard Kuiper
Netherlands-born American astronomer
Gérard Mourou
French physicist
Gerard 't Hooft
Dutch theoretical physicist
Gerd Binnig
German physicist
Giovanni Domenico Cassini
Italian/French mathematician, astronomer, engineer, and astrologer
Gustaf Dalén
Swedish Nobel Laureate and industrialist
Gustav Kirchhoff
German physicist
Gustav Ludwig Hertz
German physicist
Hannes Alfvén
Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and science fiction author (1908–1995), winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physics
Hans Bethe
German-American nuclear physicist
Hans Christian Ørsted
Danish physicist and chemist (1777–1851)
Hans Georg Dehmelt
German physicist
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Dutch experimental physicist (1853–1926)
Heinrich Hertz
German physicist, namesake of the SI unit of frequency
Heinrich Kayser
German physicist
Heinrich Mache
Physicist
Heinrich Rohrer
Swiss physicist
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers
18th and 19th-century German physician and astronomer
Hendrik Lorentz
Dutch physicist
Henri Becquerel
Late 19th-century French physicist and engineer
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
American astronomer (1868–1921)
Henry Cavendish
British natural philosopher, and scientist (1731 – 1810)
Henry Norris Russell
American astronomer (1877–1957)
Henry Way Kendall
American particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics
Herbert Kroemer
German-American physicist (born 1928)
Hermann von Helmholtz
German physicist and physiologist
Hideki Yukawa
Japanese theoretical physicist
Horst Ludwig Störmer
German physicist
Hugh David Politzer
American physicist
Hugh Everett III
American scientist (1930–1982)
Igor Tamm
Russian physicist
Ilya Frank
Soviet physicist
Isaac Newton
English polymath (1642–1726)
Isidor Isaac Rabi
American nuclear physicist (1898–1988)
Ivar Giaever
Norwegian physicist
J. Hans D. Jensen
German nuclear physicist
J. J. Thomson
British physicist
J. Michael Kosterlitz
British physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer
American theoretical physicist (1904–1967)
Jack Steinberger
German-American physicist, Nobel laureate
Jagadish Chandra Bose
Physicist, biologist and botanist (1857–1937)
James Chadwick
English physicist
James Clerk Maxwell
Scottish physicist (1831–1879)
James Cronin
American physicist
James Franck
German physicist
James Prescott Joule
English physicist and brewer
James Rainwater
American physicist
Jan Oort
Dutch astronomer
Jean Baptiste Perrin
French physicist
Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille
French physicist (1797-1869)
Jean-Baptiste Biot
French physicist
Jerome Isaac Friedman
American physicist
Jim Peebles
Canadian-American astrophysicist and cosmologist
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
British astrophysicist
Johann Gottfried Galle
German astronomer
Johannes Diderik van der Waals
Dutch physicist who greatly advanced the fields of thermodynamics and molecular science
Johannes Hevelius
17th-century astronomer and mayor of Gdańsk
Johannes Kepler
17th-century German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer
Johannes Stark
German physicist and Nobel laureate
John C. Mather
American astrophysicist and cosmologist
John Cockcroft
British nuclear physicist (1897–1967)
John Dalton
British chemist and physicist (1766–1844)
John Flamsteed
17/18th-century English astronomer
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck
American physicist and mathematician
John L. Hall
American physicist (born 1934)
John Robert Schrieffer
American physicist
John Tebbutt
19th and 20th-century Australian astronomer
John Theophilus Desaguliers
French-born British natural philosopher and clergyman
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
English physicist
Joseph Henry
American scientist and the 1st Secretary of the Smithsonian
Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.
American astronomer
Joseph von Fraunhofer
Bavarian physicist
Julian Schwinger
American theoretical physicist (1918–1994)
K. Alex Müller
Swiss physicist and Nobel laureate (born 1927)
Kai Siegbahn
Swedish physicist (1918-2007)
Karl Ferdinand Braun
German inventor and physicist
Karl Guthe Jansky
American astronomer
Karl Schwarzschild
German physicist (1873–1916)
Katherine Johnson
African American mathematician
Kenneth G. Wilson
American theoretical physicist (1936–2013)
Kip Thorne
American physicist, writer, and Nobel Laureate (born 1940)
Klaus von Klitzing
German physicist (born 1943)
Konstantin Novoselov
Russian-British physicist known for graphene work
Laura Bassi
Italian physicist (1711–1778)
Lawrence Bragg
Australian-born British physicist and X-ray crystallographer
Lawrence Krauss
American particle physicist and cosmologist
Leo Esaki
Japanese physicist
Leon Cooper
American physicist (born 1930)
Léon Foucault
French physicist
Leon M. Lederman
American mathematician and physicist
Lev Landau
Soviet physicist
Lise Meitner
Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist (1878–1968)
Loránd Eötvös
Hungarian physicist (1848–1919)
Lord Kelvin
British physicist, engineer and mathematician (1824–1907)
Louis de Broglie
Nobel laureate credited to pioneer the discovery of wave character of matter
Louis Harold Gray
British physicist (1905-1965)
Louis Néel
French physicist
Ludwig Boltzmann
Austrian physicist and philosopher
Luis Walter Alvarez
American physicist, inventor and professor
Lyman Spitzer
American astronomer
Makoto Kobayashi
Japanese physicist
Manne Siegbahn
Swedish physicist
Margaret Burbidge
British-born American astrophysicist
Margaret Lindsay Huggins
Astronomer
Maria Goeppert Mayer
German-American theoretical physicist
Maria Mitchell
American astronomer
Marie Curie
Polish-French physicist and chemist (1867–1934)
Mark Oliphant
Physicist and 27th Governor of South Australia
Martin Lewis Perl
American scientist
Martin Ryle
English radio astronomer
Martinus J. G. Veltman
Dutch physicist
Mary Somerville
Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath
Masatoshi Koshiba
Japanese physicist
Max Born
German physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate
Max Planck
German theoretical physicist
Max von Laue
German physicist
Melvin Schwartz
American physicist
Michael E. Brown
American astronomer
Michael Faraday
English chemist and physicist (1791–1867)
Michel Mayor
Swiss astrophysicist & Nobel laureate of Physics
Michio Kaku
American theoretical physicist, futurist and author
Mikhail Lomonosov
Russian polymath, scientist and writer (1711–1765)
Murray Gell-Mann
American physicist
Nancy Roman
American astronomer and principal in the Hubble Space Telescope project
Neil deGrasse Tyson
American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator
Nevill Mott
English physicist, Nobel prize winner
Nicolaas Bloembergen
Dutch-born American physicist
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot
French physicist and engineer (1796–1832)
Nicolaus Copernicus
15th–16th-century mathematician and astronomer
Niels Bohr
Danish physicist
Nikolay Basov
Soviet physicist
Norman Ramsey Jr.
American physicist
Oliver Lodge
British physicist and writer
Osborne Reynolds
Anglo-Irish innovator (1842-1912)
Otto Stern
German-American physicist (1888–1969)
Otto von Guericke
17th-century German scientist, inventor, and politician
Owen Chamberlain
American physicist
Owen Richardson
British physicist (1879-1959)
Pascual Jordan
German physicist and politician
Patrick Blackett
English physicist (1897–1974)
Paul Dirac
English mathematician and theoretical physicist (1902–1984)
Pavel Cherenkov
Soviet physicist
Percy Williams Bridgman
Americann Nobel laureate in physics (1882–1961)
Peter Grünberg
German physicist
Peter Higgs
British physicist
Philip W. Anderson
American physicist
Philipp Lenard
Hungarian-German physicist and Nobel laureate
Pierre Curie
French physicist
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Nobel laureate physicist
Pieter Zeeman
Dutch physicist
Polykarp Kusch
German-American physicist (1911-1993)
Pyotr Kapitsa
Soviet physicist
Rainer Weiss
American physicist
Raymond Davis Jr.
American scientist (1914-2006)
Reinhard Genzel
German astrophysicist
Riccardo Giacconi
Italian-American astrophysicist (1931–2018)
Richard E. Taylor
Canadian physicist
Richard Feynman
American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)
Robert Andrews Millikan
American physicist and Nobel Laureate (1868–1953)
Robert B. Laughlin
American physicist
Robert Coleman Richardson
American physicist
Robert Hofstadter
American physicist (1915–1990)
Robert Hooke
English natural philosopher, architect and polymath
Robert Woodrow Wilson
American astronomer
Rolf Maximilian Sievert
Swedish medical physicist, professor
Roy J. Glauber
American theoretical physicist
Rudolf Clausius
German mathematical physicist
Rudolf Mössbauer
German physicist (1929–2011)
Russell Alan Hulse
American astronomer
Samuel C. C. Ting
Nobel prize winning physicist
Samuel Langley
American astronomer, physicist and inventor (1834–1906)
Sandra Faber
American astrophysicist
Satyendra Nath Bose
Indian physicist and polymath from Bengal
Saul Perlmutter
American astrophysicist and Nobel laureate
Serge Haroche
French physicist, Nobel laureate
Sheldon Glashow
American theoretical physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)
Shin'ichirō Tomonaga
Japanese physicist (1906-1979)
Simon Marius
16th and 17th-century German astronomer
Simon Newcomb
Canadian-American mathematician
Simon van der Meer
Dutch physicist
Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet
Anglo-Irish mathematician and physicist
Stephen Gray (scientist)
English physicist
Stephen Hawking
English theoretical physicist (1942–2018)
Steven Chu
American physicist, former United States Secretary of Energy and nobel laureate
Steven Weinberg
American theoretical physicist
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Indian-American physicist (1910-1995)
Takaaki Kajita
Japanese physicist
Theodor W. Hänsch
German physicist and nobel laureate
Thomas Johann Seebeck
Baltic German physicist
Thomas Young (scientist)
18th/19th-century English polymath
Toshihide Maskawa
Japanese theoretical physicist (born 1940)
Tsung-Dao Lee
Chinese-American physicist
Tycho Brahe
Danish astronomer and alchemist
Urbain Le Verrier
French astronomer and mathematician
Val Logsdon Fitch
American nuclear physicist
Vera Rubin
American astronomer (1928–2016)
Vesto Slipher
American astronomer
Victor Francis Hess
Austrian physicist and Nobel prize laureate (1883-1964)
Vitaly Ginzburg
Russian physicist
Walter Baade
German astronomer
Walter Houser Brattain
American physicist
Walther Bothe
German nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize shared with Max Born
Werner Heisenberg
German theoretical physicist (1901–1976)
Wilhelm Eduard Weber
German physicist
Wilhelm Röntgen
German physicist (1845–1923)
Wilhelm Wien
German physicist (1864-1928)
Willard Boyle
Canadian physicist
William Alfred Fowler
American nuclear physicist (1911–1995)
William Daniel Phillips
Physics Nobel laureate
William Gilbert (physicist)
English physician and natural philosopher
William Henry Bragg
British scientist
William Herschel
German-born British astronomer and composer (1738–1822)
William Huggins
English astronomer
Williamina Fleming
Scottish astronomer
Willis Lamb
American physicist (1913–2008)
Wolfgang Ketterle
German physicist
Wolfgang Paul
German physicist
Wolfgang Pauli
Austrian theoretical physicist (1900–1958)
Yang Chen-Ning
Chinese physicist
Yoichiro Nambu
Japanese-American nobel-winning physicist
Zhang Yuzhe
Chinese astronomer
Zhores Alferov
Soviet-Russian physicist (1930–2019)