field list

A course in Physics

The people who built physics as we practise it, in the order they arrived.

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Ibn al-Haytham

965 – 1040

Founded optics and the experimental method in the Book of Optics.

Iraq·Physics · Mathematics

Galileo Galilei

1564 – 1642

Pointed a telescope upward and broke the authority of the ancients.

Italy·Astronomy · Physics · MathematicsFull profile

Blaise Pascal

1623 – 1662

Probability theory, hydrostatics, and a mechanical calculator at nineteen.

France·Mathematics · Physics · Philosophy

Christiaan Huygens

1629 – 1695

Wave theory of light, the pendulum clock, Saturn's rings.

Netherlands·Physics · Astronomy

Isaac Newton

1643 – 1727

Showed that one law governs the apple and the Moon alike.

United Kingdom·Physics · Mathematics · AstronomyFull profile

Émilie du Châtelet

1706 – 1749

Translated Newton into French and established kinetic energy as mv².

France·Physics · Mathematics

Benjamin Franklin

1706 – 1790

Electricity, bifocals, and the American public sphere.

United States·Physics · Literature · Engineering

Ruđer Bošković

1711 – 1787

Proposed an atomic force theory two centuries early.

Croatia·Physics · Astronomy

Alessandro Volta

1745 – 1827

Built the first battery; the volt is his.

Italy·Physics · Chemistry

Carl Friedrich Gauss

1777 – 1855

The Prince of Mathematicians; number theory, geodesy, magnetism.

Germany·Mathematics · Astronomy · Physics

Michael Faraday

1791 – 1867

A bookbinder's apprentice who gave humanity electricity on demand.

United Kingdom·Physics · ChemistryFull profile

James Clerk Maxwell

1831 – 1879

Four equations that unified electricity, magnetism and light — hence radio and Wi-Fi.

United Kingdom·Physics · Mathematics

Nikola Tesla

1856 – 1943

Alternating current, induction motors and radio principles.

Serbia·Engineering · Physics

Max Planck

1858 – 1947

Quantised energy and started quantum theory.

Germany·PhysicsNobel

Marie Skłodowska-Curie

1867 – 1934

The only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.

Poland·Physics · Chemistry · MedicineNobelFull profile

Ernest Rutherford

1871 – 1937

Found the atomic nucleus and split the atom.

New Zealand·Physics · ChemistryNobelFull profile

Guglielmo Marconi

1874 – 1937

Made radio a transatlantic reality.

Italy·Engineering · PhysicsNobel

Lise Meitner

1878 – 1968

Explained nuclear fission; passed over by the Nobel committee. Element 109 is meitnerium.

Austria·Physics · Chemistry

Albert Einstein

1879 – 1955

Rewrote space, time, gravity and light in a single year of work.

Germany·PhysicsNobelFull profile

Emmy Noether

1882 – 1935

Noether's theorem links symmetry to conservation laws — the backbone of modern physics.

Germany·Mathematics · Physics

Niels Bohr

1885 – 1962

Quantum atom and the Copenhagen interpretation.

Denmark·PhysicsNobel

Erwin Schrödinger

1887 – 1961

Wave mechanics and What Is Life?, which inspired the DNA hunters.

Austria·Physics · BiologyNobel

C. V. Raman

1888 – 1970

Raman scattering, now the basis of a ubiquitous laboratory spectroscopy.

India·PhysicsNobel

Satyendra Nath Bose

1894 – 1974

Bose–Einstein statistics; the boson is named after him.

India·Physics

Werner Heisenberg

1901 – 1976

The uncertainty principle.

Germany·PhysicsNobel

Hideki Yukawa

1907 – 1981

Predicted the meson and the nuclear strong force.

Japan·PhysicsNobel

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

1910 – 1995

Worked out at nineteen why some stars must collapse into black holes.

India·Astronomy · Physics · MathematicsNobelFull profile

Maurice Wilkins

1916 – 2004

Shared the DNA structure Nobel.

New Zealand·Biology · PhysicsNobel

Richard Feynman

1918 – 1988

QED, nanotechnology's founding lecture, and the Challenger diagnosis.

United States·PhysicsNobel

Abdus Salam

1926 – 1996

Unified the electromagnetic and weak forces; first Muslim science laureate.

Pakistan·PhysicsNobel

Peter Higgs

1929 – 2024

Predicted the boson that gives particles mass, found 48 years later.

United Kingdom·PhysicsNobel

Stephen Hawking

1942 – 2018

Hawking radiation and A Brief History of Time.

United Kingdom·Physics · Astronomy