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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#11301

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.

#11302

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.

#11303

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.

#11304

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...

#11305

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 .

#11306

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.

#11307

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.

#11308

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.

#11309

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.

#11310

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 ...

#11311

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.

#11312

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.

#11313

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...

#11314

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 .

#11315

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.

#11316

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.

#11317

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.

#11318

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.

#11319

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.

#11320

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 .

#11321

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.

#11322

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.

#11323

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.

#11324

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.

#11325

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.

#11326

Benjamin W. Lee

Benjamin W. Lee

1935 - 1977 (42 years)

Benjamin Whisoh Lee , or Ben Lee, was a Koreann- American theoretical physicist. His work in theoretical particle physics exerted great influence on the development of the standard model in the late 20th century, especially on the renormalization of the electro-weak model and gauge theory.

#11327

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.

#11328

Gregor Wentzel

1898 - 1978 (80 years)

Gregor Wentzel was a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics. Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin developed the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation in 1926. In his early years, he contributed to X-ray spectroscopy, but then broadened out to make contributions to quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and meson theory.

#11329

John F. Mustard

John F. Mustard is a planetary scientist and professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. He specializes in using remote sensing and spectroscopy technology to examine and analyze planetary bodies. Mustard investigates the formation and evolution of rocky planets such as Mars, Mercury, the Moon and the Earth.

#11330

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy

1883 - 1947 (64 years)

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy was a French biophysicist and philosopher. He is probably best remembered by scientists for his work on the surface tension, and other properties, of liquids. Life and work Du Noüy was a descendant of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille. His mother wrote many novels, one of which, Amitié Amoureuse, was translated into 16 languages and ran for 600 editions in France. Born and educated in France, du Noüy obtained the degrees of LL.B., Ph.B., Sc.B., Ph.D., and Sc.D.

#11331

Max Krook

1913 - 1985 (72 years)

Max Krook was an American mathematician and astrophysicist. Krook was born in Standerton, South Africa, the son of Pesach Israel Krook and Leah Krook. An undergraduate at the University of the Witwatersrand, Krook received a doctorate in mathematics from Cambridge University in England in 1938 under the supervision of Arthur Eddington. He was subsequently recruited to Birmingham University by Rudolf Peierls.

#11332

Walter Houser Brattain

Walter Houser Brattain

1902 - 1987 (85 years)

Walter Houser Brattain was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. Brattain devoted much of his life to research on surface states.

#11333

Martin Ryle

1918 - 1984 (66 years)

Sir Martin Ryle was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources. In 1946 Ryle and Derek Vonberg were the first people to publish interferometric astronomical measurements at radio wavelengths. With improved equipment, Ryle observed the most distant known galaxies in the universe at that time. He was the first Professor of Radio Astronomy in the University of Cambridge and founding director of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. He was the twelfth Astronomer Royal from 1972 to 1982....

#11334

Otto Stern

1888 - 1969 (81 years)

Otto Stern was also the pen name of German women's rights activist Louise Otto-Peters . Otto Stern was a German-American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. He was the second most nominated person for a Nobel Prize, with 82 nominations in the years 1925–1945 , ultimately winning in 1943.

#11335

Ferdinand Brickwedde

Ferdinand Brickwedde

1903 - 1989 (86 years)

Ferdinand Graft Brickwedde , a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards , in 1931 produced the first sample of hydrogen in which the spectrum of its heavy isotope, deuterium, could be observed. This was a critical step in the discovery of deuterium, for which Brickwedde's collaborator, Harold Urey, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934.

#11336

W. W. Hansen

1909 - 1949 (40 years)

William Webster Hansen was an American physicist and professor. He was one of the founders of the technology of microwave electronics. Biography Hansen's father William G Hansen, who was a son of immigrants from Denmark, was a hardware store owner in Fresno, California. He encouraged his son's early talent in mathematics and enthusiasm for electronics. He entered Stanford University at the age of 16, earning his B.A. in 1929 and his Ph.D. in 1933.

#11337

Engelbert Broda

1910 - 1983 (73 years)

Engelbert Broda was an Austrian chemist and physicist suspected by some to have been a KGB spy code-named Eric, who could have been a main Soviet source of information on British and American nuclear research.

#11338

William V. Houston

William V. Houston

1900 - 1968 (68 years)

William Vermillion Houston was an American physicist who made contributions to spectroscopy, quantum mechanics, and solid-state physics as well as being a teacher and administrator. He became the second president of Rice University in 1946.

#11339

Max von Laue

1879 - 1960 (81 years)

Max Theodor Felix von Laue was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. In addition to his scientific endeavors with contributions in optics, crystallography, quantum theory, superconductivity, and the theory of relativity, Laue had a number of administrative positions which advanced and guided German scientific research and development during four decades. A strong objector to Nazism, he was instrumental in re-establishing and organizing German science after World War II.

#11340

Arthur Jeffrey Dempster

Arthur Jeffrey Dempster

1886 - 1950 (64 years)

Arthur Jeffrey Dempster was a Canadian-American physicist best known for his work in mass spectrometry and his discovery in 1935 of the uranium isotope 235U. Early life and education Dempster was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Toronto in 1909 and 1910, respectively. He travelled to study in Germany, and then left at the outset of World War I for the United States; there he received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago.

#11341

Edison Pettit

1889 - 1962 (73 years)

Edison Pettit was an American astronomer. He was born in Peru, Nebraska. Pettit received his bachelor's degree from the Nebraska State Normal School in Peru. He taught astronomy at Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas from 1914 to 1918. He married Hannah Steele Pettit, who was an assistant at Yerkes Observatory, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1920.

#11342

Adolf Smekal

1895 - 1959 (64 years)

Adolf Gustav Stephan Smekal was an Austrian theoretical physicist, with interests in solid state physics, known for the prediction of the inelastic scattering of photons . Adolf Smekal studied at the Vienna College of Technology , received his doctorate from the University of Graz , and then studied at the University of Berlin .

#11343

Tony Skyrme

1922 - 1987 (65 years)

Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme was a British physicist. He proposed modelling the effective interaction between nucleons in nuclei by a zero-range potential. This idea is still widely used today in nuclear structure, and in equations of state for neutron stars.

#11344

Josef-Maria Jauch

1914 - 1974 (60 years)

Josef Maria Jauch was a Swiss/American theoretical physicist, known for his work on quantum electrodynamics and on the foundations of quantum theory, and leader of the "Geneva School" of mathematical physics.

#11345

Ludwik Silberstein

1872 - 1948 (76 years)

Ludwik Silberstein was a Polish-American physicist who helped make special relativity and general relativity staples of university coursework. His textbook The Theory of Relativity was published by Macmillan in 1914 with a second edition, expanded to include general relativity, in 1924.

#11346

Suri Bhagavantam

1909 - 1989 (80 years)

Suri Bhagavantam was an Indian scientist and administrator. He was Vice chancellor of Osmania University and Director of Indian Institute of Science and Defence Research and Development Organisation.

#11347

J. A. Ratcliffe

1902 - 1987 (85 years)

John Ashworth Ratcliffe CB CBE FRS was an influential British radio physicist. Biography Ratcliffe was born in Bacup, the elder son of Harry Heys Ratcliffe, a partner in the stone quarrying firm of Henry Heys and Co., and Beatrice Alice. daughter of Richard Ashworth, founder of the firm of Mitchells, Ashworth, Stansfield and Co.

#11348

Ernest Lawrence

Ernest Lawrence

1901 - 1958 (57 years)

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

#11349

Valentine Bargmann

1908 - 1989 (81 years)

Valentine "Valya" Bargmann was a German-American mathematician and theoretical physicist. Biography Born in Berlin, Germany, to a German Jewish family, Bargmann studied there from 1925 to 1933. After the National Socialist Machtergreifung, he moved to Switzerland to the University of Zürich where he received his Ph.D. under Gregor Wentzel.

#11350

Gerhard Schmidt

1919 - 1971 (52 years)

Gerhard Martin Julius Schmidt , was an organic chemist and chemical crystallographer, dean of the chemistry faculty of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and its scientific director in 1969. Schmidt was the founder of X-ray crystallography at the Weizmann Institute and in Israel – a field in which Weizmann Institute's Professor Ada Yonath was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009.

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