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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#10201

Julius August Christoph Zech

1821 - 1864 (43 years)

Julius August Christoph Zech was a German astronomer and mathematician. In 1849, Zech published a table of logarithms; as a result, Zech logarithmss for finite fields are named after him. In 1863, Zech attended the founding meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft and became its Vorstand . Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander assumed this role upon Zech's death..

#10202

Albert Wigand

1882 - 1932 (50 years)

Ernst Heinrich Paul Albert Wigand , known as Albert Wigand, was a German professor who lectured in the fields of physics, geodesy, meteorology and climatology. His is most well-known as one of the earliest physicists to successfully devise a method of studying fog and cloud matter in mid-air. In his later years, he became a fierce supporter of the xenophobic and nationalist thinking that would underpin Nazi ideology, and that association has clouded his legacy.

#10203

Arthur Charles Lewis Brown

1869 - 1946 (77 years)

Arthur Charles Lewis Brown was an American scholar who wrote on the origin of Arthurian Romances. Biography Brown was born in Avon, New York, son of Rev. Charles Fortune and Sarah C. Brown. His father was a popular Episcopal missionary and priest who authored Christ on the Throne of Power and Antichrist: A Treatise on the Book of Revelation, to St. John the Divine in 1885. Given his Episcopal upbringing, in 1883, Arthur attended and graduated Hobart College, the oldest Episcopal college in America. In 1896, he assumed a teaching post with Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he began his studies of the legends of King Arthur.

#10204

Herman Schultz

1823 - 1890 (67 years)

Per Magnus Herman Schultz was a Swedish astronomer. Biography and career In 1878 Schultz became professor at Uppsala University and director of the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory. In 1873 he became a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala and joined the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1875.

#10205

Harold Lawton

1899 - 2005 (106 years)

Harold Walter Lawton was an English scholar of French literature and, prior to his death, one of the last surviving veterans and the last prisoner of war of World War I in Britain. Born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, he volunteered for military service in 1916, enlisting with the Royal Welch Fusiliers before being transferred to the Cheshire Regiment. Upon completing training, in 1917 he was posted to the Western Front where he was transferred again, to The East Yorkshire Regiment. During the German spring offensive of 1918 his unit, the 1/4th Battalion the East Yorkshires, was sent to reinforce...

#10206

Owen F. T. Roberts

1896 - 1968 (72 years)

Captain Owen Fiennes Temple Roberts FRSE MC was a British astronomer and meteorologist. Life Owen Roberts was born in Mauritius in 1896, and was the son of Alfred Temple Roberts and his wife Susan Charlotte Catherine Fiennes-Clinton .

#10207

Vladimir Mitkevich

1872 - 1951 (79 years)

Vladimir Fyodorovich Mitkevich was a Soviet scientist and electrical engineer. In 1929, Mitkevich participated in the Second International Congress of the History of Science held in London in June–July 1931.

#10208

Andreas Stöberl

1470 - 1515 (45 years)

Andreas Stöberl , better known by his latinised name Andreas Stiborius , was a German humanist astronomer, mathematician, and theologian working mainly at the University of Vienna. Life Stöberl studied from 1479 on at the University of Ingolstadt, where he became a magister in 1484, and subsequently a member of the Faculty of Arts. At Ingolstadt, he met and became a friend of Conrad Celtis, an eminent advocate of humanism who lectured there between 1492 and 1497. When Celtis moved to Vienna in 1497, Stöberl followed his mentor. Stiborius was a member of the Sodalitas Litterarum Danubiana, a circle of humanists founded by Celtis.

#10209

Abdul Muktadir

1940 - 1971 (31 years)

Mohammad Abdul Muktadir was a Bengali geologist and academic who was killed in the 1971 Dhaka University massacre. He is considered a martyr in Bangladesh. Early life Abdul Muktadir was the third child born into a Bengali Muslim family in Pashchimpara, Silam, Sylhet District on 19 February 1940. His mother was Begum Moshaheda Khanom. His father Abdul Jabbar was a renowned Moulvi and social activist, as well as the founder and headmaster of Silam PL Junior High School. Abdul Jabbar also used to voluntarily teach at the Jalalpur Alia Madrasa in Sylhet Sadar. Abdul Muktadir had two brothers and four sisters.

#10210

Andrew B. Davidson

1831 - 1902 (71 years)

Andrew Bruce Davidson DD LLD DLit was an ordained minister in the Free Church of Scotland and Professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages in New College, University of Edinburgh. Life and career Davidson was born at Kirkhill, in the parish of Ellon, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on 25 April 1831. He was educated initially at the Aberdeen Grammar school under Dr Melvin and afterwards at the University of Aberdeen, graduating in 1849. Following graduation he took the position of teacher in the Free Church school in Ellon and while in that position taught himself French, German, Dutch and Spanish in addition to the classical languages he already knew.

#10211

George W. Brindley

1905 - 1983 (78 years)

George William Brindley was a British-American crystallographer and mineralogist. He was known for his study of clay minerals including the structure of kaolinites. Education and career Brindley studied at University of Manchester in the laboratory of Sir Lawrence Bragg and Reginald W. James, where he obtained an BSc and an MSc in crystallography in 1928. He then moved to University of Leeds, obtaining a PhD in physics in 1933. He subsequently became a Lecturer and a Reader in X-ray physics at Leeds. Until 1945, his research focused on X-ray scattering in metals and its use in studying their ...

#10212

Filippo Ferrari

1551 - 1626 (75 years)

Filippo Ferrari was an Italian Servite friar and scholar, known as a geographer, and also noted as a hagiographer. Life He was born at Oviglio in Piedmont. It is near Alessandria, and he was nicknamed Alessandrino . He taught mathematics for 48 years at the University of Pavia.

#10213

Gerrit Grijns

1865 - 1944 (79 years)

Gerrit Grijns , was a Dutch researcher and co-discoverer of vitamin B1 as the successor to the later Nobel Prize winner Christiaan Eijkman. It was Eijkman who in the former Dutch East Indies was the first to associate the deficiency disease beriberi with the lack of the outer membrane in machine-peeled rice. Eijkman fell ill and returned to Europe. His successor Grijns believed that the membrane contains a substance that is indispensable for a healthy metabolism. By writing of "partial hunger" and "protective substance" in 1901, Grijns anticipated the concept of vitamins.

#10214

Clayton Oscar Person

1922 - 1990 (68 years)

Clayton Oscar Person, was recognized internationally as an authority on the genetics of host-parasite relations. He was born and raised in Aylesbury, Saskatchewan, Canada and died in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His writings have made a major contribution to the development of a rigorous theoretical basis for our understanding of how the genetic structure of parasitic populations interacts with that of their host populations. This was known as the gene-for-gene relationship. His theoretical methods have been applied widely in the practical management of parasitic diseases in agricult...

#10215

Mieczysław Małecki

1903 - 1946 (43 years)

Mieczysław Małecki was a Polish linguist. Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, during World War II under a cover of collaboration with the Nazi-run he in fact, with support of the Polish Underground State, used his position to organize much of the Polish underground education in occupied Kraków. He resumed his post at the Jagiellonian University after the war, although he died shortly afterwards .

#10216

Herbert Stansfield

1872 - 1960 (88 years)

Herbert Stansfield was a British physicist and Professor at University College, Southampton whose research focussed on soap films, the Michelson Interferometer and the Echelon Spectroscope. Early life Stansfield was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1872, the second son of Frederic and Mary Ellen Stansfield. His elder brother was the British-Canadian metallurgist Alfred Stansfield . He was educated at Ackworth School, Bradford Technical College and the Royal College of Science, London.

#10217

William Watson

1884 - 1952 (68 years)

William Watson FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish physicist and mathematician. Life He was born on 15 June 1884 in Musselburgh just east of Edinburgh, the son of Janet Watson of Tranent and her husband, William Watson of Fossoway, then headmaster of Musselburgh Grammar School. He attended his father's school from 1891 to 1898 then completed his education at the Royal High School, Edinburgh. He was school dux in 1902.

#10218

Frederick Hertz

1878 - 1964 (86 years)

Frederick Hertz was a British sociologist, economist and historian of Austrian origin. Life and work Hertz attended the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium in Vienna and studied after the Matura law and economics at the University of Vienna. 1901-1902 he continued his studies at the University of Munich, 1903, he was in Vienna with a thesis on the discount and foreign exchange policy of the Austro-Hungarian Bank PhD. During his studies, Hertz joined the Austrian Social Democracy.

#10219

Emanuel Kayser

1845 - 1927 (82 years)

Friedrich Heinrich Emanuel Kayser was a German geologist and palaeontologist, born in Königsberg. He was educated at the universities of Halle, Heidelberg and Berlin, where in 1871 he qualified as a lecturer in geology. From 1873 he worked as a state geologist for the Preußischen Geologischen Landesanstalt , and in 1881 became a professor at the Berlin Mining Academy. In 1885 he succeeded Wilhelm Dunker as professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Marburg.

#10220

Antonio Ferri

1912 - 1975 (63 years)

Antonio Ferri was an Italian scientist, prominent in the field of aerodynamics, with a specialization in hypersonic and supersonic flight. Born in 1912 in Norcia, Italy, from 1937 he conducted research in Guidonia Montecelio, where the most prominent and advanced research on high-speed aerodynamics was taking place. In 1938, at the age of 26, he received Italy's highest prize for science, the Premio dell'Accademia d'Italia for science. Among the work he conducted there were spectacular experiments in 1939–1940 with supersonic wind tunnels.

#10221

Józef Zawadzki

1886 - 1951 (65 years)

Józef Zawadzki was a Polish physical chemist and technologist. Father of Tadeusz and Anna Zawadzka. Zawadzki was a co-founder, President and Vice-President of the Polskie Towarzystwo Chemiczne. He was a professor and rector of Warsaw University of Technology, and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning .

#10222

Rudolf Much

1862 - 1936 (74 years)

Rudolf Much was an Austrian philologist and historian who specialized in Germanic studies. Much was Professor and Chair of Germanic Linguistic History and Germanic Antiquity at the University of Vienna, during which he tutored generations of students and published a number of influential works, some of which have remained standard works up to the present day.

#10223

Paul Rudolph

1858 - 1935 (77 years)

Paul Rudolph was a German physicist who designed the first anastigmatic lens while working for Carl Zeiss. After World War I, he joined the Hugo Meyer optical company, where he designed most of their cine lenses.

#10224

James Brown Fisk

1910 - 1981 (71 years)

James Brown Fisk was president of Bell Labs from 1959 to 1973. Biography He was born on August 30, 1910, in West Warwick, Rhode Island. He received his degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “The Scattering of Electrons from Molecules.” He joined Bell Laboratories in 1939. He was named vice-president of research in 1954. He headed Bell Labs from 1959 to 1973. He was named chairman of the board of Bell Laboratories in 1973 and retired in 1974.

#10225

Jules Antoine Lissajous

Jules Antoine Lissajous

1822 - 1880 (58 years)

Jules Antoine Lissajous was a French physicist, after whom Lissajous figuress are named. Among other innovations, Lissajous invented the Lissajous apparatus, a device that creates the figures that bear his name. In it, a beam of light is bounced off a mirror attached to a vibrating tuning fork, and then reflected off a second mirror attached to a perpendicularly oriented vibrating tuning fork , onto a wall, resulting in a Lissajous figure. This led to the invention of other apparatus such as the harmonograph.

#10226

Sethus Calvisius

Sethus Calvisius

1556 - 1615 (59 years)

Sethus Calvisius or Setho Calvisio, originally Seth Kalwitz , was a German music theorist, composer, chronologer, astronomer, and teacher of the late Renaissance. Biography He was born into a peasant family at Gorsleben in present-day Thuringia. By the exercise of his musical talents he earned money enough for the start, at Helmstedt, of a university career, which the aid of a wealthy patron enabled him to continue at Leipzig. He became director of the music-school at Pforta in 1572. In 1594 he was transferred to Leipzig in the same post, including directing the Thomanerchor at the Thomaskirche.

#10227

Forrest Shepherd

1800 - 1888 (88 years)

Forrest Shepherd was an American scientist. Shepherd, son of Daniel and Anna Shepherd, was born in Boscawen, N. H., October 31, 1800. He entered Dartmouth College in 1823, but spent the Senior year at Yale College. He was admitted to the bachelor's degree at both Colleges in 1827. He remained in New Haven as a graduate student for two or three years, and on April 29, 1832, married Sophia W. Storer, of Rutland, Vt. In 1841 and 1842 he took a partial course in the Yale Divinity School.

#10228

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.

#10229

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.

#10230

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.

#10231

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...

#10232

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.

#10233

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 .

#10234

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.

#10235

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.

#10236

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.

#10237

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.

#10238

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.

#10239

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.

#10240

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.

#10241

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.

#10242

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.

#10243

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...

#10244

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.

#10245

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.

#10246

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.

#10247

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.

#10248

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.

#10249

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.

#10250

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.

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