The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#11301
William Grylls Adams
1836 - 1915 (79 years)
William Grylls Adams was professor of Natural Philosophy at King's College, London. He was active in research on subjects ranging from light, magnetism, and astronomy to electrical power generation and transmission. His research in optics yielded the discovery that certain materials, notably selenium, produce an electric current when exposed to light. Adams also actively participated in many academic societies and held major positions within the societies.
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Johann Karl Burckhardt
1773 - 1825 (52 years)
Johann Karl Burckhardt was a German-born astronomer and mathematician. He later became a naturalized French citizen and became known as Jean Charles Burckhardt. He is remembered in particular for his work in fundamental astronomy, and for his lunar theory, which was in widespread use for the construction of navigational ephemerides of the Moon for much of the first half of the nineteenth century.
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Eduard Schönfeld
1828 - 1891 (63 years)
Eduard Schönfeld was a German astronomer. Education Schönfeld was born at Hildburghausen, in the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, where he had a distinguished career at the gymnasium. On leaving the gymnasium, he desired to devote himself to astronomy, but abandoned the idea in deference to his father's wishes. He went first to Hanover, and afterwards to Kassel to study architecture, for which he seems to have had little inclination. 1849 found him studying chemistry under Bunsen at Marburg, where his love for astronomy was revived by Gerling's lectures.
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Ludwig A. Colding
1815 - 1888 (73 years)
Ludwig August Colding was a Danish civil engineer and physicist who articulated the principle of conservation of energy contemporaneously with, and independently of, James Prescott Joule and Julius Robert von Mayer though his contribution was largely overlooked and neglected.
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Agnes Mary Clerke
1842 - 1907 (65 years)
Agnes Mary Clerke was an Irish astronomer and writer, mainly in the field of astronomy. She was born in Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland, and died in London. Family Agnes Clerke was the daughter of John William Clerke who was, at the time, a bank manager in Skibbereen, and his wife Catherine Mary Deasy whose father was a judge's registrar. She had two siblings; her older sister, Ellen Mary and her younger brother, Aubrey St. John . Her elder sister Ellen also wrote about astronomy. All of the Clerke children were entirely home schooled.
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Marian Albertovich Kowalski
1821 - 1884 (63 years)
Marian Albertovich Kowalski was a Polish-Russian astronomer. He was born in Dobrzyń nad Wisłą in Congress Poland, Russian Empire. His patronymic is alternatively given as Voytekhovich or Voytsekhovich , which suggests his father's name was Wojciech. Confusingly, a few Russian sources even give his name as Marian Albertovich Kovalsky-Voytekhovich, but this seems to be an error.
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Pieter Hendrik van Cittert
1889 - 1959 (70 years)
Pieter Hendrik van Cittert was a Dutch physicist and science historian. He was born in Gouda, Netherlands, to Benjamin Pieter van Cittert and Petronella Antonia Huber, and died on October 8, 1959, in Utrecht. His achievements include proving the van Cittert–Zernike theorem about the coherence of radiation and founding the University Museum in Utrecht.
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Edward S. Holden
1846 - 1914 (68 years)
Edward Singleton Holden was an American astronomer and the fifth president of the University of California. Early years He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1846 to Edward and Sarah Frances Holden. From 1862 to 1866, he attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he obtained a B.S. degree. He later trained at West Point in the class of 1870.
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Peter Tait
1831 - 1901 (70 years)
Peter Guthrie Tait was a Scottish mathematical physicist and early pioneer in thermodynamics. He is best known for the mathematical physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy, which he co-wrote with Lord Kelvin, and his early investigations into knot theory.
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Al-Mahani
820 - 880 (60 years)
Abu-Abdullah Muhammad ibn Īsa Māhānī was a Persian mathematician and astronomer born in Mahan, and active in Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate. His known mathematical works included his commentaries on Euclid's Elements, Archimedes' On the Sphere and Cylinder and Menelaus' Sphaerica, as well as two independent treatises. He unsuccessfully tried to solve a problem posed by Archimedes of cutting a sphere into two volumes of a given ratio, which was later solved by 10th century mathematician Abū Ja'far al-Khāzin. His only known surviving work on astronomy was on the calculation of azimuths. He was als...
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François Jacquier
1711 - 1788 (77 years)
François Jacquier was a French Franciscan mathematician and physicist. Life His early education was entrusted to an ecclesiastic, who recognized in him an inclination to science and mathematics. When sixteen years old, François, entered the Order of Friars Minor, and after profession was sent to Rome, to complete his studies in the French convent of the order, Trinità dei Monti. With the permission of his superiors he specialized in mathematics, and at the same time studied the ancient languages. He became proficient in Hebrew, and spoke Greek as though it were his mother-tongue.
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Charles Wolf
1827 - 1918 (91 years)
Charles Joseph Étienne Wolf was a French astronomer. In 1862, Urbain Le Verrier offered him a post as assistant at the Paris Observatory. In 1867 he and Georges Rayet discovered Wolf–Rayet stars.
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Johann Jakob Müller
1846 - 1875 (29 years)
Johann Jakob Müller was a physiologist and physicist. Education In 1868, he obtained his "Dr. med." degree from the University of Zurich, under Adolf Fick with a thesis entitled: Untersuchungen über den Drehpunkt des menschlichen Auges . As part of these studies he variously studied in the University of Zurich, University of Leipzig, and University of Heidelberg.
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Solon Irving Bailey
1854 - 1931 (77 years)
Solon Irving Bailey was an American astronomer and discoverer of the main-belt asteroid 504 Cora, on June 30, 1902. Bailey joined the staff of Harvard College Observatory in 1887. He received an bachelor's and masters from Boston University in 1881 and 1884, respectively, and a masters from Harvard University in 1888 . He also earned anAfter the observatory received the "Boyden Fund" bequest from the will of Uriah A. Boyden, Bailey played a major role in finding a site for Boyden Station in Arequipa, Peru, and was in charge of it from 1892 to 1919. He was also one of the first to carry out meteorological studies in Peru, traveling extensively in desolate areas at very high altitude.
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Johann von Lamont
1805 - 1879 (74 years)
Johann von Lamont, FRSE , born John Lamont, was a Scottish-German astronomer and physicist. Biography Lamont was born at Corriemulzie near Inverey in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The son of Robert Lamont and Elizabeth Ewan, his education began at the local school in Inverey, near Braemar. In 1817 his father died and John was sent to be educated at St James' monastery at Regensburg, Germany. He began to work in astronomy and joined the Bogenhausen Observatory, became its director in 1835, took his doctorate of philosophy in 1830 and became professor of astronomy in 1852 at Munich University. At t...
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Karl Christian Bruhns
1830 - 1881 (51 years)
Karl Christian Bruhns was a German astronomer. Biography He was the son of a locksmith, and in 1851 went as locksmith and mechanic, first to Borsig, and then to Berlin with the firm of Siemens and Halske. In Berlin, he attracted the attention of Johann Encke, then director of the Berlin Observatory, by his remarkable powers as a computer. In 1852 Bruhns was appointed as assistant, and in 1854 as observer, in the Observatory, and in 1859 as instructor in the university. In 1860 he was called to the University of Leipzig as professor of astronomy and director of the new observatory to be constr...
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William M. Fairbank
1917 - 1989 (72 years)
William Martin Fairbank was an American physicist known in particular for his work on liquid helium. Career Fairbank was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and earned an AB from Whitman College in 1939. During the Second World War he was a staff member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory from 1942 to 1945. He was then an assistant professor of physics at Amherst College from 1947 to 1952. In 1948, Fairbank earned his PhD in physics from Yale University where "under the direction of C.T. Lane, [Fairbank conducted] research on liquid helium and superconductivity at lo...
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Edme Mariotte
1620 - 1684 (64 years)
Edme Mariotte was a French physicist and priest . He is particularly well known for formulating Boyle's law independently of Robert Boyle. Mariotte is also credited with designing the first Newton's cradle.
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Manuel Bryennios
1275 - 1340 (65 years)
Manuel Bryennios or Bryennius was a Byzantine scholar who flourished in Constantinople about 1300 teaching astronomy, mathematics and musical theory. His only surviving work is the Harmonika , which is a three-volume codification of Byzantine musical scholarship based on the classical Greek works of Ptolemy, Nicomachus, and the Neopythagorean authors on the numerological theory of music. One of Bryennios's students was Theodore Metochites, the grand logothete during the reign of Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos . Metochites studied astronomy under Bryennios.
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John Adams
1920 - 1984 (64 years)
Sir John Bertram Adams was an English accelerator physicist and administrator. Adams is mostly known for his work at CERN and Culham Laboratory. Despite a lack of formal university education, Adams worked for organizations like the Telecommunications Research Establishment and the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in the 1940s and early 1950s. He served as acting director and eventually as elected director of CERN, from 1976 until 1981.
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Thomas Poulter
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Thomas Charles Poulter was an American scientist and antarctic explorer who worked at the Armour Institute of Technology and SRI International, where he was an associate director. Early career Poulter taught physics while attending high school , joined the U.S. Navy in 1918 and returned to school in 1921. Poulter received his B.S. from Iowa Wesleyan College in 1923; took a position as head of the chemistry division at IWC ; and served as head of the math, physics and astronomy divisions with "great creativity and much success" while attending graduate school at the University of Chicago .
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Mario Guiducci
1585 - 1646 (61 years)
Mario Guiducci was an Italian scholar and writer. A friend and colleague of Galileo, he collaborated with him on the Discourse on Comets in 1618. Early life Mario Guiducci was born in the San Frediano quarter of Florence. His father was Alessandro Guiducci, son of a senator, and his mother was Camilla Capponi. He had at least two brothers, Giulio, who died in 1654 and Simone, as well as a sister, Maddalena, who married Orazio Cavalcanti. He was sent to the Jesuit College in Rome as a boy. He never appears to have earned his doctorate in philosophy at Rome, but he did become a Doctor of both laws at the university of Pisa on 27 May 1610.
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Arthur Williams Wright
1836 - 1915 (79 years)
Arthur Williams Wright was an American physicist. Wright spent most of his scientific career at Yale University, where he received the first science Ph.D. awarded outside of Europe. His research, which ranged from electricity to astronomy, produced the first X-ray image and experimented with Röntgen rays. He also proved instrumental in securing funding for the first dedicated physics laboratory building in the United States, the Sloane Physical Laboratory.
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Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt
1825 - 1884 (59 years)
Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt was a German astronomer and geophysicist. He was the director of the National Observatory of Athens in Greece from 1858 to 1884. Julius Schmidt was tireless in his work, it was suggested by William Henry Pickering that he perhaps devoted more of his life than any other man to the study of the Moon. During his lifetime, he made some of the most complete lunar maps of the 19th century.
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Patrick d'Arcy
1725 - 1779 (54 years)
Patrick d'Arcy was an Irish mathematician born in Kiltullagh, County Galway in the west of Ireland. His family, who were Catholics, suffered under the penal laws. In 1739 d'Arcy was sent abroad by his parents to an uncle in Paris. He was tutored in mathematics by Jean-Baptiste Clairaut, and became a friend of Jean-Baptiste's son, Alexis-Claude Clairaut, , who was a brilliant young mathematician. d'Arcy made original contributions to dynamics. He is best known for his part in the discovery of the principle of angular momentum, in a form which was known as "the principle of areas," which he announced in 1746.
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Paul Wittich
1546 - 1586 (40 years)
Paul Wittich was a German mathematician and astronomer whose Capellan geoheliocentric model, in which the inner planets Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun but the outer planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbit the Earth, may have directly inspired Tycho Brahe's more radically heliocentric geoheliocentric model in which all the 5 known primary planets orbited the Sun, which in turn orbited the stationary Earth.
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Pol Swings
1906 - 1983 (77 years)
Pol F. Swings was a Belgian astrophysicist who was known for his studies of the composition and structure of stars and comets. He used spectroscopy to identify the elements in astronomical bodies, and, in particular, comets. Swings studied at the University of Liège, where he was professor of spectroscopy and astrophysics from 1932 to 1975. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in the United States .
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François Folie
1833 - 1905 (72 years)
François Folie was a Belgian astronomer. He was the Administer at the University of Liège, director of the Institute of Astrophysics at the Cointe Observatory, and director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
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A. E. Douglass
1867 - 1962 (95 years)
A. E. Douglass was an American astronomer. He discovered a correlation between tree rings and the sunspot cycle, and founded the discipline of dendrochronology, which is a method of dating wood by analyzing the growth ring pattern. He started his discoveries in this field in 1894 when he was working at the Lowell Observatory. During this time he was an assistant to Percival Lowell, but fell out with him when his experiments made him doubt the existence of artificial "canals" on Mars and visible spokes on Venus.
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Guillaume Postel
1510 - 1581 (71 years)
Guillaume Postel was a French linguist, Orientalist, astronomer, Christian Kabbalist, diplomat, polyglot, professor, religious universalist, and writer. Born in the village of Barenton in Normandy, Postel made his way to Paris to further his education. While studying at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, he became acquainted with Ignatius of Loyola and many of the men who would become the founders of the Society of Jesus, retaining a lifelong affiliation with them. He entered Rome in the novitiate of the Jesuits in March 1544, but left on December 9, 1545 before making religious vows.
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Martin van Marum
1750 - 1837 (87 years)
Martin van Marum was a Dutch physician, inventor, scientist and teacher, who studied medicine and philosophy in Groningen. Van Marum introduced modern chemistry in the Netherlands after the theories of Lavoisier, and several scientific applications for general use. He became famous for his demonstrations with instruments, most notable the Large electricity machine, to show statical electricity and chemical experiments while curator for the Teylers Museum.
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Sergey Blazhko
1870 - 1956 (86 years)
Sergey Nikolayevich Blazhko was a Russian and Soviet astronomer, a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union . He was a graduate of Moscow State University and held a number of positions there including head of the Moscow Observatory from 1920-1931. He discovered a secondary variation of the amplitude and period of some RR Lyrae stars and related pulsating variables, now known as the Blazhko effect.
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Macedonio Melloni
1798 - 1854 (56 years)
Macedonio Melloni was an Italian physicist, notable for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light. Life Born at Parma, in 1824 he was appointed professor at the local University but was compelled to escape to France after taking part in the revolution of 1831. In 1839 he went to Naples and was soon appointed director of the Vesuvius Observatory, a post that he held until 1848. In 1845, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Philippe de La Hire
1640 - 1718 (78 years)
Philippe de La Hire was a French painter, mathematician, astronomer, and architect. According to Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle he was an "academy unto himself". He was born in Paris, the son of Laurent de La Hire, a distinguished artist and Marguerite Coquin. In 1660, he moved to Venice for four years to study painting. Upon his return to Paris, he became a disciple of Girard Desargues from whom he learned geometrical perspective and was received as a master painter on 4 August 1670. His paintings have sometimes been confused with those of his son, Jean Nicolas de La Hire, who was a docto...
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Vadim Lashkaryov
1903 - 1974 (71 years)
Vadim Evgenievich Lashkaryov , a prominent Soviet experimental physicist, was born in Kyiv, to a family of a lawyer. He was an Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and is known for his fundamental contributions to physics of semiconductors.
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Charles-Eugène Guye
1866 - 1942 (76 years)
Charles-Eugène Guye was a Swiss physicist. He was born in Saint-Christophe and died in Geneva. Life and works Guye studied physics at the University of Geneva, where he received his doctorate in 1889, studying the phenomenon of optical rotatory dispersion.
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Antoine Thomas
1644 - 1709 (65 years)
Antoine Thomas was a Jesuit priest from the Spanish Netherlands, and missionary and astronomer in Qing China. His Chinese name was 安多. Early life Born in Namur, Belgium in 1644, Thomas joined the Society of Jesus in 1660 and first taught in the schools of Armentières, Huy and Tournai. Equipped with a thorough training in Mathematics and Astronomy he was sent, at his own request, as a missionary to China . After a long and difficult sea journey - passing through Goa, Siam , and Malacca - he reached Macau in 1682 just in time to observe an eclipse of the Sun .
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Harald Wergeland
1912 - 1987 (75 years)
Harald Nicolai Storm Wergeland was a Norwegian physicist. He was a professor at the Norwegian Institute of Technology. He was born in Norderhov as a son of forest manager Harald Nicolay Storm Wergeland and Ebba Marie Weien . In 1937 he married Hedvig Louise Ording, a sister of Fredrik Ording.
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Arnold Nordsieck
1911 - 1971 (60 years)
Arnold Theodore Nordsieck was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work with Felix Bloch on the infrared problem in quantum electrodynamics. He developed the inertial electrostatic gyroscope used as part of the inertial navigation system of nuclear submarines that allows them to remain underwater without having to surface to ascertain their location.
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Leonhard Sohncke
1842 - 1897 (55 years)
Leonhard Sohncke was a German mathematician who classified the 65 space groups in which chiral crystal structures form, called Sohncke groups. He was a professor of physics at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe from 1871 to 1883, at Jena from 1883 to 1886, and at the Technical University of Munich from 1886 to 1897.
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Anders Lindstedt
1854 - 1939 (85 years)
Anders Lindstedt was a Swedish mathematician, astronomer, and actuarial scientist, known for the Lindstedt-Poincaré method. Life and work Lindstedt was born in a small village in the district of Sundborns, Dalecarlia a province in central Sweden. He obtained a PhD from the University of Lund aged 32 and was subsequently appointed as a lecturer in astronomy. He later went on to a position at the University of Dorpat where he worked for around seven years on theoretical astronomy. He combined practical astronomy with an interest in theory, developing especially an interest in the three-body...
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Karl L. Littrow
1811 - 1877 (66 years)
Karl Ludwig Edler von Littrow was an Austrian astronomer. Born in Kazan, Russian Empire, he was the son of astronomer Joseph Johann Littrow. He studied mathematics and astronomy at the universities of Vienna and Berlin, receiving his doctorate at the University of Krakow in 1832. In 1842 he succeeded his father as director of the Vienna Observatory. Under his leadership, construction of a new observatory began in Währing in 1872; he died, however, prior to its completion. He was the husband of Auguste von Littrow.
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Emil Rupp
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Philipp Heinrich Emil Rupp was a German physicist, regarded by many as a respectable and important experimentalist in the late 1920s. He was later forced to recant all five of the papers he had published in 1935, admitting that his findings and experiments had been fictions. There is evidence that most if not all of his earlier experimental results were forged as well.
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Jan Tesánek
1728 - 1788 (60 years)
Jan Tesánek was a Bohemian scholar and author of scientific literature. Biography Tesánek studied at a gymnasium in Prague and later at Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University. In 1745, he became a Jesuit and studied mathematics, physics and astronomy under Joseph Stepling, a student of Ignatz Mühlwenzel. Stepling introduced Tesánek to the works of Isaac Newton. After finishing under the Faculty of Philosophy, Tesánek continued with study of theology. He was then ordained a priest and became professor of physics at Charles University. Later, he taught mathematics at the University of Olomouc.
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Joseph Zähringer
1929 - 1970 (41 years)
Joseph Zähringer was a German physicist. From 1949 until 1954 he attended the Universität Freiburg, studying physics, mathematics, chemistry and mineralogy. In 1955 he became an assistant at the university, and in 1956 he came to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. By 1958 he joined the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany as an assistant. He eventually became the director of the institute in 1965.
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Rao Yutai
1891 - 1968 (77 years)
Rao Yutai was a Chinese physicist, one of the founders of modern physics in China. He was a founding member of Academia Sinica in 1948 and of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955. Early years Rao was born in Linchuan, Jiangxi, Qing Empire in December 1891. His father was a government officer in Qing Dynasty. He studied Chinese classical literature in childhood. In 1905, he went to study in a high school in Shanghai. Dr. Hu Shih taught his English.
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Margaret Eliza Maltby
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
Margaret Eliza Maltby was an American physicist notable for her measurement of high electrolytic resistances and conductivity of very dilute solutions. Maltby was the first woman to earn a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT, where she had to enroll as a "special" student because the institution did not accept female students. Maltby was also the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Göttingen in 1895.
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August Köhler
1866 - 1948 (82 years)
August Karl Johann Valentin Köhler was a German professor and early staff member of Carl Zeiss AG in Jena, Germany. He is best known for his development of the microscopy technique of Köhler illumination, an important principle in optimizing microscopic resolution power by evenly illuminating the field of view. This invention revolutionized light microscope design and is widely used in traditional as well as modern digital imaging techniques today.
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Karl Scheel
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Karl Friedrich Franz Christian Scheel was a German physicist. He was a senior executive officer and head of Department IIIb at the Reich Physical and Technical Institute. Additionally, he served as editor of the journal , the semi-monthly bibliographic section of the journal Physikalische Berichte, the Verhandlungen of the German Physical Society, and the society’s journal Zeitschrift für Physik. From 1926 to 1935, he was editor of the Handbuch der Physik. An endowment by Scheel and his wife Melida funds the annual awarding of the Karl Scheel Prize by the Physical Society in Berlin.
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Paul Guldin
1577 - 1643 (66 years)
Paul Guldin was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the Guldinus theorem to determine the surface and the volume of a solid of revolution. Guldin was noted for his association with the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Guldin composed a critique of Cavalieri's method of Indivisibles.
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