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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#10051

Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt

1875 - Present (151 years)

Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt was an Austrian physicist, who conducted research on radioactivity. Early life and education She was born Cäcilia Wendt on 4 May 1875 in Troppau, Silesia. She studied at the University of Vienna from 1896 to 1900, where she published work on rational values of trigonometric functions, receiving a doctoral degree for research on special functions of importance in mathematical physics.

#10052

Thomas Brattle

1657 - 1713 (56 years)

Thomas Brattle was an American merchant who served as treasurer of Harvard College and member of the Royal Society. He is known for his involvement in the Salem Witch Trials and the formation of the Brattle Street Church.

#10053

Francesco Capuano Di Manfredonia

1450 - 1490 (40 years)

Francesco Capuano Di Manfredonia was an Italian astronomer, professor, and member of the clergy. Up until the 1880s there wasn't a lot known about Capuano, and the little bit that was known was derived directly from his printed works.

#10054

Perley G. Nutting

Perley G. Nutting

1873 - 1949 (76 years)

Perley Gilman Nutting was an American optical physicist and the founder of the Optical Society of America . He served as its first president from 1916 to 1917. OSA is now known as Optica. Born August 22, 1873, in Randolph, Wisconsin, Nutting was a graduate of Stanford University , the University of California, Berkeley , and Cornell University . He joined the National Bureau of Standards as a physicist in 1903. It is claimed that in 1904, Nutting constructed one of the earliest, if not the first, neon sign, which was displayed at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition; however, this story ha...

#10055

Maksymilian Nowicki

Maksymilian Nowicki

1826 - 1890 (64 years)

Maksymilian Siła-Nowicki was a Polish zoology professor and pioneer conservationist in Austrian Poland. His major studies were on the beetles and lepidoptera of eastern Galicia and later in life, he was involved in the conservation of the fauna of the Tatra Mountains. He was the father of the poet Franciszek Nowicki and a brother-in-law of Franciszek Kasparek law professor and rector at Kraków University.

#10056

Sir Iain Colquhoun, 7th Baronet

1887 - 1948 (61 years)

Sir Iain Colquhoun, 7th Baronet, 29th Laird of Luss, KT, DSO & Bar, FRSE , was a Scottish landowner and British Army soldier during the First World War. Military career During the First World War, Colquhoun served in the Scots Guards. In 1914, the opposing troops on the Western Front had unofficially observed a Christmas truce. The following year, however, when the 28-year-old Captain Colquhoun agreed to a German officer's request for a short truce on Christmas Day, lasting about an hour, he was brought before a court-martial. He was defended by Raymond Asquith, son of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith .

#10057

Adam Mitchell Hunter

1871 - 1955 (84 years)

Rev Adam Mitchell Hunter FRSE DLitt was a Scottish minister, mathematician, astronomer and author of church history. Life He was born in Edinburgh in 1871. He was educated at George Watsons College then studied divinity at the University of Edinburgh and Marburg University in central Germany.

#10058

Walter H. Johns

1908 - 1985 (77 years)

Walter Hugh Johns, was a Canadian academic and academic administrator. Born near Exeter, Ontario, Johns received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics from the University of Western Ontario in 1930 and a Ph.D. in Classics and Ancient History from Cornell University in 1934.

#10059

Carlos Ulrrico Cesco

Carlos Ulrrico Cesco

1910 - 1987 (77 years)

Carlos Ulrrico Cesco was an Argentine astronomer. He lived most of his life in San Juan, Argentina. He was a well-known discoverer of minor planets credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 19 numbered minor planets.

#10060

Frank Heath

1863 - 1946 (83 years)

Sir Henry Frank Heath was a British educationist and civil servant. He was the eldest son of Henry Charles Heath, miniature pointer to Queen Victoria. He was educated at Westminster School and University College, London, after which he spent a year at the University of Strasbourg. When he came back to England he was appointed Professor of English at Bedford College, London , and lecturer in English language and literature at King's College, London.

#10061

Patrick Wilson

1743 - 1811 (68 years)

Patrick Wilson FRSE LLD was a Scottish astronomer, type-founder, mathematician and meteorologist. He was the Regius Professor of Practical Astronomy at the University of Glasgow from 1784 to 1799. In 1783 he was one of the several joint founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

#10062

Haseb-i Tabari

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Ayyub-i Haseb-i Tabari was a Persian astronomer. All of his works are in Persian language and none of them are written in Arabic . Not much is known about his life. His works are among the oldest scientific works in Persian language. He used many Persian equivalents for Arabic words. He was from Amol, Tabaristan.

#10063

Constantin Miculescu

1863 - 1937 (74 years)

Constantin Miculescu was a Romanian physicist. A professor at the University of Bucharest, his research focused on heat, optics and acoustics. Miculescu is noted for his 1891 determination, with great precision, of the mechanical equivalent of the calorie using water circulated in a calorimeter.

#10064

Donald Macleod

1887 - 1972 (85 years)

Donald Bannerman Macleod was a New Zealand molecular physicist. Early life and education Born at Doyleston, near Christchurch, in 1887, Macleod studied at Canterbury University College, graduating with an MA with first-class honours in chemistry in 1910.

#10065

Keith Lucas

1879 - 1916 (37 years)

Keith Lucas FRS was a British scientist who carried out pioneering work in neuroscience at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was the son of Francis Robert and Katharine Mary Lucas. He was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he graduated BA with a first-class in natural sciences in 1901. In 1902 he worked in New Zealand, on the bathymetrical survey of the lakes, and he became a Fellow of Trinity in 1904. In 1907 he became an additional university demonstrator in physiology, and in 1908 a lecturer in natural sciences. He delivered the Royal Society Croonian Lecture in 1912.

#10066

Francis Howell

1625 - 1679 (54 years)

Francis Howell was Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, from 1657 to 1660. Life Howell was born in Gwinear in Cornwall. He was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy between 1654 and 1657. He was a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford and was appointed to the position of Principal of Jesus College by Oliver Cromwell, in preference to Seth Ward, who was the choice of the fellows of the college. The college has had strong links to Wales since its foundation. In contrast, Howell was originally from Cornwall and was the first principal not to be either Welsh or of Welsh descent . Howell remained in p...

#10067

Franciszek Armiński

1789 - 1848 (59 years)

Franciszek Armiński was a Polish astronomer. He was professor at the Warsaw University and director of the astronomical observatory in Łazienki Park, Warsaw. He studied many astronomical acts and predicted space theories.

#10068

Shams al-Din Abu Abd Allah al-Khalili

Shams al-Din Abu Abd Allah al-Khalili

1320 - 1380 (60 years)

Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Khalīlī was a Mamluk-era Syrian astronomer who compiled astronomical tables. He worked for most of his life as a at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

#10069

David van Goorle

1591 - 1612 (21 years)

David van Goorle was a Dutch philosopher and theologian, and one of the first modern atomists. Biography Van Goorle was the son of David van Goorle Sr., a Protestant refugee from Antwerp, who at the time of his birth was treasurer for stadtholder Adolf van Nieuwenaar. His uncle was Abraham Gorlaeus. His mother was a Frisian noblewoman, the daughter of admiral Doecke van Martena, known for his role in the Dutch and Frisian wars of independence. Although he called himself Ultrajectinus , he grew up with his maternal grandparents in their stins in the Frisian village of Cornjum.

#10070

Selim Lemström

1838 - 1904 (66 years)

Karl Selim Lemström , was a Finnish geophysicist. Lemström is best known on his research of aurora borealis. He had several expeditions in Finnish Lapland and even tried to create an artificial northern lights in the laboratory. In 1870 Lemström studied the metric system in Paris and introduced the system to Finland. Since 1872 he was a professor in the University of Helsinki. Lemström has been described as the "forgotten pioneer of northern light studies," and some of his experiments have been compared with the ones made by Nikola Tesla.

#10071

Richard Heinzel

Richard Heinzel

1838 - 1905 (67 years)

Richard Heinzel was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Richard Heinzel studied classical and German philology at the University of Vienna, where his instructors were Franz Pfeiffer and Johannes Vahlen. From 1860 to 1864 he worked as a school teacher at gymnasiums in Trieste, Linz and Vienna, and in 1868 became a professor at the University of Graz. In 1873 he succeeded Wilhelm Scherer as professor of German language and literature at the University of Vienna. In 1874 he became a member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.

#10072

Hermann Ambronn

1856 - 1927 (71 years)

Ernst Ludwig Victor Hermann Ambronn was a German botanist and microscopist. Ambronn studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin, where his instructors were Leopold Kny and Simon Schwendener. Following graduation , he worked as an assistant to August Schenk in the botanical institute at Leipzig, where from 1882 to 1887, he was curator of the university herbarium. In 1889 he received the title of associate professor. During the 1880s, he also spent time conducting research in Trieste and at the zoological station in Naples.

#10073

Carl Gustav Witt

Carl Gustav Witt

1866 - 1946 (80 years)

Carl Gustav Witt was a German astronomer and discoverer of two asteroids who worked at the Berlin Urania Observatory, a popular observatory of the Urania astronomical association of Berlin. He wrote a doctoral thesis under the direction of Julius Bauschinger.

#10074

Ruth Wheeler

1877 - 1948 (71 years)

Ruth Wheeler was an American chemist specialising in the field of nutrition and public education. Early life and education Ruth Wheeler was born on 5 August 1877 in Plains, Pennsylvania, to Jared Ward Wheeler and Martha Jane Wheeler . She was taught to read by her mother, and graduated from West Pittston High School in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Her thinking was influenced by her Welsh grandfather, Rev. Dr. Evan Benjamin Evans, a minister concerned with feeding the poor.

#10075

Ibn al-Raqqam

1250 - 1315 (65 years)

Ibn Al‐Raqqam Muḥammad Ibn Ibrahim Al‐Mursi Al‐Andalusi Al‐Tunisi Al‐Awsi also known as Ibn Al‐Raqqam was a 13th century Andalusian-Arab astronomer, mathematician and physician; but also a Sunni Muslim theologian and jurist.

#10076

Federico Delpino

Federico Delpino

1833 - 1905 (72 years)

Giacomo Giuseppe Federico Delpino was an Italian botanist who made early observations on floral biology, particularly the pollination of flowers by insects. Delpino introduced a very broad view of plant ecology and was the first to suggest pollination syndromes, sets of traits associated with specific kinds of pollinators. He wrote Pensieri sulla Biologia Vegetale in 1867 and this failed to gather sufficient notice due to it being written in Italian. He corresponded with Charles Darwin and was one of the first to speculate on the idea of "plant intelligence".

#10077

Johann Holetschek

1846 - 1923 (77 years)

Johann Holetschek was an Austrian astronomer, known for his research on comets. Born in Thuma, in Lower Austria, he worked at the observatory of the University of Vienna. He died at Vienna. The crater Holetschek on the Moon is named after him.

#10078

Christoph Gottfried Andreas Giebel

1820 - 1881 (61 years)

Christoph Gottfried Andreas Giebel was a German zoologist and palaeontologist. He was a professor of zoology at the University of Halle where he managed the zoology collections at the museum. His interests were in systematics and paleontology and he opposed Darwinian evolution. He published several works including Palaozoologie ; Fauna der Vorwelt ; Deutschlands Petrefacten ; Odontographie ; Lehrbuch der Zoologie ; and Thesaurus ornithologiae .

#10079

Ladislaus Weinek

1848 - 1913 (65 years)

Ladislaus Weinek was an Austro-Hungarian astronomer. He was educated in Vienna, and worked for a period at the photography laboratories in Schwerin. In 1874 he joined a German expedition to the Kerguelen Islands to observe a transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. His results from the expedition were published in Nova Acta Leopoldina.

#10080

Samuel Christian Hollmann

1696 - 1787 (91 years)

Samuel Christian Hollmann was a German philosopher. Between 1750 and 1776, Hollmann published numerous volumes in the fields of logic and medicine. Background Samuel Christian Hollmann was born in 1696 in Szczecin, Poland. In 1730, Hollmann worked as a supervisor to Anton Wilhelm Amo both during his work at the University of Wittenberg, and a few months later when Hollman was appointed to the newly opened University of Göttingen. Samuel Christian Hollmann was also a professor of logic to Henry Muhlenberg.

#10081

Leopold Heinrich Fischer

1817 - 1886 (69 years)

Leopold Heinrich Fischer was a German zoologist and mineralogist. Biography He was the son of Aloys Fischer. He studied medicine at Freiburg and Vienna, and afterwards, worked as a general practitioner in Freiburg-in-Brisgau. From 1845 he taught classes in zoology and mineralogy, and in 1854 was named an associate professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Freiburg, where in 1859 he attained a full professorship. From 1855 he served as director of the mineralogical-geognostic collection.

#10082

William Gunion Rutherford

William Gunion Rutherford

1853 - 1907 (54 years)

William Gunion Rutherford was a Scottish scholar. Life He was born in Peeblesshire on 17 July 1853 and educated at St Andrews and Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in natural science. His intention to enter medical profession was abandoned in favour of a scholastic career. From 1883 to 1901 he was Head Master of Westminster School; and his death deprived classical scholarship in the UK of one of its most brilliant modern representatives. He was also a Fellow of University College, Oxford for a time.

#10083

Holger Thiele

1878 - 1946 (68 years)

Holger Thiele was a Danish American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets and comets. He was the son of Thorvald Nicolai Thiele , the noted Danish astronomer, actuary and mathematician, after whom the main-belt asteroid 1586 Thiele is named.

#10084

Charles-Eusèbe Dionne

1846 - 1925 (79 years)

Charles-Eusèbe Dionne , also known as Charles Eusebe or C. E. Dionne, was a French Canadian naturalist and taxidermist. He is considered the first professional French Canadian ornithologist. Dionne was a self-taught scientist and wrote several books on the natural history of Quebec, including the first field guide to the province's mammal fauna; he was a well-respected scholar and became a fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union.

#10085

Francesco Serao

1702 - 1783 (81 years)

Francesco Serao was an Italian physician, physicist, geologist, philosopher and scholar. He was born in San Cipriano d'Aversa and died in Naples, Italy. Biography Serao was taught by the Jesuits in Naples. He followed the thinking of Descartes. At eighteen, he graduated in medicine and in 1727 he was awarded the chair of theoretical medicine. In 1732 he was professor of anatomy, then of medicine.

#10086

F. Franklin Moon

1880 - 1929 (49 years)

Frederick Franklin Moon was a forester, and head of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University from 1920-27. Early life and education Moon born in Easton, Pennsylvania, on July 3, 1880, to William White and Ophelia Frances Nightingale Moon. He attended Amherst College , spent two years conducting postgraduate work at Harvard University , before attending Yale University .

#10087

Alois Purgathofer

Alois Purgathofer

1925 - 1984 (59 years)

Alois Purgathofer , was an Austrian astronomer at the Vienna Observatory from 1954 to 1984. He mainly worked on the photometry of galactic star clusters, but also on the asteroid 51 Nemausa. In 1969 the Leopold Figl observatory was built on the Mitterschöpfl mountain under his technical and astronomical advice, containing a 1.5 m Ritchey–Chrétien telescope. His knowledge of astronomical instruments was legendary, especially of optical and electronic devices and of image converters. He died unexpectedly on 13 March 1984 during a business trip to the Calar Alto Observatory in Almería, Spain.

#10088

Anton Willem Nieuwenhuis

Anton Willem Nieuwenhuis

1864 - 1953 (89 years)

Anton Willem Nieuwenhuis was a Dutch explorer and physician who travelled extensively in central Borneo in the 1890s, recording valuable ethnographic information about the Dayak people and making biological collections.

#10089

Temistocle Zona

1848 - 1910 (62 years)

Temistocle Zona was an Italian astronomer. Born in Porto Tolle, in 1870 Zona graduated in architecture at the University of Padua, and he was a volunteer assistant at the Observatory of that city from 1868 to 1871. In October 1880, he entered the staff of Gaetano Cacciatore at the Observatory of Palermo, and in 1891 he became the director of the Observatory, a role he held until 1898. In 1882, he became professor at the University of Palermo. He is best known as the discoverer of the comet C/1890 V1 Zona, on November 15, 1890.

#10090

James Franck

1882 - 1964 (82 years)

James Franck was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate in 1906 and his habilitation in 1911 at the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of professor extraordinarius. He served as a volunteer in the German Army during World War I. He was seriously injured in 1917 in a gas attack and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.

#10091

Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Sakharov

1921 - 1989 (68 years)

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet physicist and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world. Although he spent his career in physics in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, overseeing the development of thermonuclear weapons, Sakharov also did fundamental work in understanding particle physics, magnetism, and physical cosmology. Sakharov is mostly known for his political activism for individual freedom, human rights, civil liberties and reforms in Russia, for which he was deemed a dissident and faced persecution from the So...

#10092

Charles Christian Lauritsen

Charles Christian Lauritsen

1892 - 1968 (76 years)

Charles Christian Lauritsen was a Danish/American physicist. Early life and career Lauritsen was born in Holstebro, Denmark and studied architecture at the Odense Tekniske Skole, graduating in 1911. In 1916 he emigrated to the United States with his wife Sigrid Henriksen and son Tommy, first to Florida, where the family lived for a time on a houseboat, and later to Boston, where he worked as a draftsman during the Great War and was a witness to the Boston Molasses Disaster. By 1921 he was working in Palo Alto on radio for communicating between ship and shore. He became interested in the desig...

#10093

Richard Threlkeld Cox

1898 - 1991 (93 years)

Richard Threlkeld Cox was a professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University, known for Cox's theorem relating to the foundations of probability. Biography He was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of attorney Lewis Cox and Elinor Cox. After Lewis Cox died, Elinor Cox married John Latané, who became a professor at Johns Hopkins University in 1913. In 1915 Richard enrolled at Johns Hopkins University to study physics, but his studies were cut short when he was drafted for World War I. He stayed in the US after being drafted and returned to Johns Hopkins University after the war, completing his BA in 1920.

#10094

Joseph Valasek

1897 - 1993 (96 years)

Joseph Valasek was an American physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Minnesota. He specialized in geometrical and physical optics, experimental optics and spectroscopy, and x-rays. He is credited with the discovery of ferroelectricity, which he identified using Rochelle salts.

#10095

Frederick C. Leonard

Frederick C. Leonard

1896 - 1960 (64 years)

Frederick Charles Leonard was an American astronomer. As a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, he conducted extensive research on double stars and meteorites, largely shaping the university's Department of Astronomy. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in 1918 and his PhD in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1921. Leonard was an astronomer from his teenage years, founding the Society for Practical Astronomy in 1909. In 1933 he founded The Society for Research on Meteorites, which later became known as the Meteoritical Society.

#10096

George O. Abell

1927 - 1983 (56 years)

George Ogden Abell was an American educator. Teaching at UCLA, priorly he worked as a research astronomer, administrator, as a popularizer of science and of education, and as a skeptic. He earned his B.S. in 1951, his M.S. in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1957, all from the California Institute of Technology. He was a Ph.D. student under Donald Osterbrock. His astronomical career began as a tour guide at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Abell made great contributions to astronomical knowledge which resulted from his work during and after the National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, especially concerning clusters of galaxies and planetary nebulae.

#10097

Hans Geiger

1882 - 1945 (63 years)

Johannes Wilhelm "Hans" Geiger was a German physicist. He is best known as the co-inventor of the detector component of the Geiger counter and for the Geiger–Marsden experiment which discovered the atomic nucleus. He was the brother of meteorologist and climatologist Rudolf Geiger.

#10098

Ralph A. Sawyer

Ralph A. Sawyer

1895 - 1978 (83 years)

Ralph Alanson Sawyer was an American physicist and a leader in American science. A New Hampshire native, he graduated from the Atkinson Academy in 1911 and in 1915 from Dartmouth. He then went to the University of Chicago where, under the direction of R. A. Millikan, he finished his PhD in 1919, a time during which he also served as a scientific liaison officer in the United States Navy. At the invitation of Harrison M. Randall, Sawyer then joined the faculty of the physics department at the University of Michigan, an affiliation that he retained for his entire career.

#10099

Erwin Madelung

1881 - 1972 (91 years)

Erwin Madelung was a German physicist. He was born in 1881 in Bonn. His father was the surgeon Otto Wilhelm Madelung. He earned a doctorate in 1905 from the University of Göttingen, specializing in crystal structure, and eventually became a professor. It was during this time he developed the Madelung constant, which characterizes the net electrostatic effects of all ions in a crystal lattice, and is used to determine the energy of one ion.

#10100

Carl K. Seyfert

1911 - 1960 (49 years)

Carl Keenan Seyfert was an American astronomer. He is best known for his 1943 research paper on high-excitation line emission from the centers of some spiral galaxies, which are named Seyfert galaxies after him. Seyfert's Sextet, a group of galaxies, is also named after him.

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