Howard H. Aiken was a 20th century mathematician and engineer who came up with the idea behind the Mark I, a forerunner to modern computing devices.
1900-1973
1911-1988
1775-1836
1905-1991
Svante Arrhenius was a Nobel Prize winning scientist known for his revolutionary theories in various fields, including physics, chemistry and astronomy.
1859-1927
1903-1995
1908-1991
Henri Becquerel was a French physicist who discovered radioactivity, an achievement for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.
1852-1908
1906-2005
Niels Bohr was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and humanitarian whose revolutionary theories on atomic structures helped shape research worldwide.
1885-1962
1882-1970
Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose is known for working with Albert Einstein on the Bose-Einstein Condensate and as namesake of the boson, or “God particle.”
1894-1974
1850-1918
Scientist George Carruthers created inventions, such as the ultraviolet camera, or spectograph, which was used by NASA in the 1972 Apollo 16 flight, revealing the mysteries of space and the Earth's atmosphere.
1939-
1920-2006
Costa Rican-born Franklin Chang-Díaz was the first Hispanic-American astronaut. He made several trips to space for NASA and developed plasma propulsion.
1950-
Jacques Alexandre César Charles was a French scientist and inventor who, along with Nicholas Robert, was the first to take flight in a hydrogen balloon.
1746-1823
Physicist Steven Chu was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work on cooling atoms, and became the U.S. Secretary of Energy in 2009.
1948-
Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize.
1867-1934
French physicist Pierre Curie was of founding fathers of modern physics and is best known for being a pioneer in radioactive studies.
1859-1906
1787-1851
Charles Coulomb was a French engineer and physicist who made pioneering discoveries in his field and came up with the theory called Coulomb’s Law.
1736-1806
Austrian physicist Christian Doppler first described the Doppler effect, in reference to the observed frequency of light and sound waves, in the paper "Concerning the Coloured Light of Double Stars."
1803-1853
Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the theory of relativity. He is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century.
1879-1955
1875-1948
1801-1887
Physicist Enrico Fermi built the prototype of a nuclear reactor and worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb.
1901-1954
1918-1988
Jean Foucault was a French physicist and inventor best known for inventing the Foucault pendulum.
1819-1868
1929-
1932-
1882-1945
1920-2005
Stephen Hawking is known for his work regarding black holes and for authoring several popular science books. He suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
1942-
1797-1878
Robert Hooke was an English philosopher, mathematician and architect who discovered the law of elasticity, now known as Hooke's law.
1635-1703
1730-1799
Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes was a Dutch scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his production of liquid helium. He also discovered superconductivity.
1853-1926
1824-1887
1923-
Edwin Land is best known as the inventor of the Polaroid camera and film, and as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation.
1909-1991
1881-1957
1926-
French physicist Gabriel Lippmann created the first color photographic plate. The creation earned him the 1908 Nobel Prize for Physics.
1845-1921
Theodore H. Maiman was a physicist, company leader, consultant and author who created the first working laser in 1960.
1927-2007
Professor Peter Mansfield received the Nobel Prize for further developing magnetic resonance (MRI) technology, leading to its widespread use in hospitals.
1933-
1874-1937
Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell originated the idea of electromagnetic radiation. His ideas formed the basis for quantum mechanics.
1831-1879
1868-1953
English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, most famous for his law of gravitation, was instrumental in the scientific revolution of the 17th century.
1643-1727
1894-1989
J. Robert Oppenheimer is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II.
1904-1967
1901-1958
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities.
1623-1662
1900-1958
Czech experimental physiologist Johannes Purkinje discovered the Purkinje effect, Purkinje cells and Purkinje fibers and first introduced the term protoplasm.
1787-1869
In 1983, astronaut and astrophysicist Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger. Ride died on July 23, 2012 at the age of 61, following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
1951-2012
1779-1869
1908-2005
Physicist Ernest Rutherford was the central figure in the study of radioactivity who led the exploration of nuclear physics.
1871-1937
1845-1923
Austrian theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger contributed to the wave theory of matter and to other fundamentals of quantum mechanics.
1887-1961
William Shockley was an engineer and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956 for his development of the transistor.
1910-1989
A student of such famed physicists as Albert Einstein and Max Planck, Leo Szilard was key in getting the United States to work on the atomic bomb.
1898-1964
1800-1877
American radio astronomer and physicist Joseph H. Taylor Jr. was the co-recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the first binary pulsar.
1941-
J.J. Thomson was a Nobel Prize winning physicist whose research led to the discovery of electrons.
1856-1940
1824-1907
1837-1923
1933-
1936-
Rosalyn S. Yalow was a Nobel Prize-winning medical physicist who conducted groundbreaking research on type II diabetes.
1921-
1922-