List of important physicists

The list of eminent physicists contains a selection of eminent physicists from antiquity to the present, based on their scientific achievements and their level of awareness. In particular, because of the expansive development of physics in the 20th century, only an exemplary selection is sought (see also the list of Nobel Prize winners for physics ).

Until well into modern times, the separation of astronomers and mathematicians is not yet clearly pronounced, and today scientists who are mainly classified as mathematicians or astronomers have made significant contributions to physics. The list also reflects the emergence of physics as an experimental science at the time of Galileo Galileo .

The classification into individual sections takes place according to the main period of activity and the order there corresponds to the date of birth.

Antiquity

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Aristotle * 384 BC Chr. In Stageira ; † 322 BC Chr. In Chalkis	In addition to an extensive philosophical work, Aristotle also left behind model ideas and statements about inanimate nature. All matter consists of four elements , all inanimate matter strives towards the state of rest, in heaven and on earth different laws of nature apply. These ideas were only overcome in modern times.
	Aristarchus of Samos * around 310 BC On Samos † around 230 BC Chr.	Aristarchus was a Greek naturalist. Studying the sizes and distances of the sun and moon, he found that the earth is about three times the size of the moon, and that the sun is much larger and much farther from the earth than the moon. He assumed that the sun could be at the center of the universe.
	Archimedes * around 287 BC BC probably in Syracuse † 212 BC Chr. Ibid.	Archimedes was a Greek mathematician and engineer. He found the law of levers and the Archimedean principle . He invented various machine elements and developed the basics of statics for statically determined systems.
	Claudius Ptolemy * around 100 AD † around 160 AD probably in Alexandria	Ptolemy is the author of the Almagest , in which the astronomical knowledge of antiquity is systematically presented. Although the Almagest described a geocentric view of the world , the orbits of the celestial bodies could be calculated in advance with the methods presented there.

Early modern age

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Nikolaus Kopernikus * February 19, 1473 in Thorn † May 24, 1543 in Frauenburg .	Nicolaus Copernicus was a church official who devoted his free time to mathematics and astronomy . In his work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium he described the heliocentric worldview of the solar system , according to which the earth rotates around its own axis and also moves around the sun like the other planets.
	William Gilbert * May 24, 1544 in Colchester , Essex , England ; † December 10, 1603 in London or Colchester	William Gilbert was the royal personal physician in London. He carried out experiments on magnetism and static electricity and was the first to systematically differentiate between these two phenomena. He realized that the earth as a whole must be a magnet and assumed that the planets were held on their orbits by some kind of magnetic force.
	Galileo Galilei * February 15, 1564 in Pisa ; † December 29, 1641 ^Jul./ January 8, 1642 ^greg.in Arcetri near Florence	Galileo Galilei was a scholar who was committed to the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus, found solid evidence for it with his telescope observations and got into a conflict with the Catholic Church that overshadowed his later years. He was the first to use the then newly invented telescope for sky observation. Experiments with the inclined plane led him to understand free fall . With this and with other experiments he is considered to be the main founder of the experimental method in physics, whereby he was also a pioneer of thought experiments . He is also considered to be the founder of the bar theory and strength theory , of the laws of scale , built the first thermometers and already dealt with air pressure, which his student Evangelista Torricelli investigated more closely.
	Johannes Kepler * December 27, 1571 in Weil der Stadt ; † November 15, 1630 in Regensburg	Johannes Kepler was a mathematician, astrologer and astronomer . He was at times the imperial court mathematician, but had to endure many blows of fate because he lived in troubled times. Kepler derived from the exact astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe , the Kepler's laws on planetary movements. He was above all theoretician, and he also pursued theoretical speculations in the manner of Pythagorean number mystics, which made him a forerunner of symmetry considerations in physics (symmetry of snow crystals, Platonic solids and planets). But he was always ready to give up theories he had put forward if they contradicted the observation.
	Blaise Pascal June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand ; † August 19, 1662 in Paris	Blaise Pascal was a French nobleman who studied mathematics, natural science and theology, among other things. He showed experimentally that there must be a vacuum and demonstrated the dependence of air pressure on sea level. He formulated the principle of communicating tubes .
	Christiaan Huygens * April 14, 1629 in The Hague ; † July 8, 1695 ibid	Christiaan Huygens was a Dutch astronomer , mathematician and physicist . He investigated the elastic collision (with the help of a Galileo transformation into the center of gravity system ) and the pendulum oscillation . He discovered the centrifugal force and the wave nature of light. From astronomical observations by Rømer and Cassini, he was the first to determine a numerical value for the speed of light .
	Isaac Newton * December 25, 1642 ^Jul./ 4th January 1643 ^greg.in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth in Lincolnshire ; † March 20, 1726 ^Jul./ March 31, 1727 ^greg.in Kensington	The English naturalist Isaac Newton improved the reflector telescope and recognized that white light is composed of light of different colors. He recognized gravity as a universal action at a distance that applies equally to heaven and earth, and formulated Newton's laws of mechanics . He is considered to be one of the most important people in the history of physics and his main work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica , in which mechanics and the theory of gravity were developed and applied to a wide variety of phenomena in addition to celestial mechanics, is one of the most important physics books of all time. It is just as important in mathematics, where he was one of the founders of analysis with Leibniz . His difficult and complex character was not only evident in the ongoing priority dispute with Leibniz over his death, but also in the fact that he devoted a large part of his labor to alchemy and theological speculation and research. He was just as consistent in exercising his office as director of the British mint.

18th century

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Daniel Bernoulli * January 29th ^jul./ February 8, 1700 ^greg.in Groningen ; † March 17, 1782 in Basel	The Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli came from a Basel mathematician family. He recognized that an increase in speed of a flowing liquid is accompanied by a decrease in pressure ( Bernoulli effect ) and was the first to explain the pressure and temperature of a gas from the free movement of independent gas molecules.
	Leonhard Euler * April 15, 1707 in Basel ; † September 7th ^July/ September 18, 1783 ^greg.in Saint Petersburg	Leonhard Euler is one of the most important mathematicians. In addition, he made, among other things, fundamental contributions to physics, he found the equations of motion for the rotation of rigid bodies , set up the Euler equations of fluid mechanics and formulated the fundamentals of continuum mechanics .
	Henry Cavendish born October 10, 1731 in Nice ; † February 24, 1810 in London	In one of the classical experiments in physics, the eccentric British nobleman Henry Cavendish was the first to measure the gravitation between two weighable objects, as predicted by Newton, and in this way determined the masses of the earth and the sun as well as the gravitational constant. It is an early example of an ingenious precision experiment. As the discoverer of hydrogen, Cavendish is also known in chemistry.
	Joseph-Louis Lagrange * January 25, 1736 in Turin as Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia ; † April 10, 1813 in Paris	The Italian mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange developed the Lagrange formalism , a general method of theoretical mechanics for setting up the equations of motion of any mechanical system. Such methods of variation (to which Euler and others also contributed) turned out to be of fundamental importance in physics, not only in mechanics, but in all areas up to quantum field theory. Another formulation of mechanics by William Rowan Hamilton ( Hamilton formalism ) from the 19th century also reflects deep mathematical structures of physics beyond mechanics.
	Charles Augustin de Coulomb * June 14, 1736 in Angoulême ; † August 23, 1806 in Paris	The French civil engineer and physicist Charles de Coulomb studied friction and earth pressure , but above all he found Coulomb's law, named after him, for the force between two charged bodies. The unit of electrical charge is named after Coulomb .
	Alessandro Volta * February 18, 1745 in Como † March 5, 1827 ibid	The Italian physicist Alessandro Volta carried out fundamental experiments on electrostatics and invented the battery . The unit of electrical voltage is named after Volta .
	Pierre Simon de Laplace * 1749 in Beaumont-en-Auge † 1827 in Paris .	French astronomer and mathematician, known for his work on celestial mechanics and cosmology, with which he summarized the knowledge and deterministic astronomical worldview at the end of the 18th century

19th century

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Joseph Fourier * 1768 in Auxerre † 1830 in Paris	As a scientist, he owed his rise to Napoleon Bonaparte , was a participant in the Egyptian expedition and later secretary of the Academie des Sciences in Paris. His introduction to Fourier analysis is fundamental in many areas of physics and beyond. Originally, he used it to deal with heat conduction .
	Thomas Young * 1773 in Milverton † 1829 in London	A British polymath who tried his hand at deciphering hieroglyphs , among other things, but is known in physics primarily for experiments on the wave nature of light ( interference , double slit experiment ) The wave image, which in continental Europe was particularly associated with the name Huygens, replaced it.
	André-Marie Ampère * 1775 in Lyon † 1836 in Marseille .	Ampère was a professor in Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique and the College de France and was interested in many things. He is best known for his experimental and theoretical contributions to the forces that electrical currents exert on one another ( Ampère's Law ), which he undertook after Hans Christian Ørsteds became aware of the magnetic effect of electrical currents . He expanded Ørsted's observation into a comprehensive theory of how currents create magnetic fields. The current unit amperes is named after him.
	Augustin Jean Fresnel * 1788 in Broglie † 1827 in Ville-d'Avray	Fresnel was one of the mathematically trained engineering graduates of the Ecole Polytechnique, who made a decisive contribution to expanding the wave nature of light in optics, as demonstrated by Thomas Young, especially in diffraction phenomena and polarized light (with François Arago ).
	Michael Faraday * 1791 in Newington (London) † 1867 in Hampton Court Green	Faraday was one of the most important experimental physicist in the history of physics, is especially known for his experimental discoveries in electrodynamics ( electromagnetic induction ) and their intuitive interpretation as field theory (Faraday lines of force), which James Clerk Maxwell in the formulation of Maxwell's equations influenced . He started out as a laboratory assistant to chemist Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution in London and also made a name for himself in chemistry. He made other important contributions to electrolysis , the influence of magnetic fields on light and thus its electromagnetic origin ( Faraday effect ), the Faraday cage and magnetism ( diamagnetism , paramagnetism ). The farad capacity unit is named after him.
	Sadi Carnot * 1796 in Paris † 1832 ibid	Carnot was the son of the scientist and politician Lazare Carnot and received an engineering education at the Ecole Polytechnique. He dealt a lot with steam engines and from their analysis developed the fundamentals of thermodynamics ( Carnot process ) that are essentially still valid today .
	William Rowan Hamilton * 1805 in Dublin † 1865 in Dunsink Observatory	The Irishman Hamilton was a mathematician, physicist and astronomer, known for his new formalism of mechanics ( Hamiltonian mechanics , Hamilton-Jacobi equation , canonical transformation ) in phase space , which turned out to be one of the mathematical foundations of modern physics (transition to Quantum mechanics, symplectic geometry , BRST formalism) alongside the Lagrange formalism, for which Hamilton was also the first to recognize its full scope ( Hamilton's principle ). Hamilton is also known as the inventor of the quaternions , with which he and his partisans developed an alternative to the vector calculus in the 19th century, which did not catch on, but was important for the development of the mathematics of the rotary group in three-dimensional space and as an example of a division algebra in the Mathematics.
	James Prescott Joule * 1818 in Salford † 1889 in Sale (Greater Manchester)	Joule was the son of a brewery owner, studied with John Dalton and later had a chemistry laboratory. By measuring the mechanical heat equivalent and the heat effect of electric current ( Joule's law ), he made significant experimental contributions to the study of the nature of heat. He also made other important contributions to thermodynamics ( Joule-Thomson effect , Joule process ) and magnetism ( Joule effect ). Sometimes he worked with William Thomson (Lord Kelvin).
	Hermann von Helmholtz * 1821 in Potsdam † 1894 in Berlin-Charlottenburg	Helmholtz began as a military doctor and professor of physiology in Berlin, but soon developed into the dominant figure in physics in Germany at the end of the 19th century. He had universal interests and is known for his contributions to physiological optics (ophthalmoscope), acoustics (also musical aspects) and vibration phenomena, the formulation of energy conservation, for his treatment of vortices in hydrodynamics, the Helmholtz coil and much more. Helmholtz was both experimental and theoretical.
	Rudolf Clausius * 1822 in Köslin † 1888 in Bonn	With the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics and the introduction of entropy and virial, Clausius is one of the founders of thermodynamics, in which he is also known for the Clausius-Clapeyron equation . He was one of the first theoretical physicists in Germany and a professor in Berlin, Zurich, Würzburg and most recently in Bonn.
	Gustav Robert Kirchhoff * 1824 in Königsberg (Prussia) † 1887 in Berlin	Kirchhoff came from the Königsberg maths and physics school and was a professor in Breslau, Heidelberg and most recently in Berlin. He is best known as a theoretical physicist, but was also the founder of spectral analysis with Robert Bunsen . Kirchhoff's rules for electrical circuits, which are known to every electrical engineer, are named after him and he is known for his contributions to thermal radiation ( Kirchhoff's law of radiation ) and plate theory as well as for his lectures on theoretical physics.
	William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin * 1824 in Belfast † 1907 in Netherhall near Largs	Lord Kelvin was a professor in Glasgow and held a dominant position in physics in Great Britain during the Victorian period. He researched both experimentally and theoretically, especially in thermodynamics ( Thomson effect , Joule-Thomson effect ) and electricity, in which he constructed measuring devices and was involved in the development of the first Atlantic cable. The temperature unit Kelvin is named after him.
	James Clerk Maxwell * 1831 in Edinburgh † 1879 in Cambridge	The Scot James Clerk Maxwell is one of the best known physicists for his theory of electromagnetism ( Maxwell equations ) and as one of the founders of statistical mechanics ( Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution ). He also dealt with color theory, gyroscopes and the rings of Saturn and was the first Cavendish Professor of Physics in Cambridge, where he set up the Cavendish Laboratory.
	Josiah Willard Gibbs * 1839 in New Haven † 1903 ibid	The professor in Yale Josiah Willard Gibbs is the founder of theoretical physics in the USA and is considered to be one of the founders of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, which he applied particularly to physical chemistry. Here, Gibbs energy , Gibbs phase rule and much more are named after him, and in statistical mechanics the ensemble concept comes essentially from him. Its role in the development and promotion of vector analysis (at the same time with Oliver Heaviside in England) in theoretical physics, especially in electrodynamics, is also important, with which, for example, the Maxwell equations only received their form known today.
	John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh * 1842 in Maldon (Essex) † 1919 in Terlins Place near Whitham	Lord Rayleigh was Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge and known for his versatile theoretical and experimental contributions to physics, especially to vibrational phenomena, on which he wrote his work The theory of sound . In optics, Rayleigh scattering is named after him and he played a role in the discovery of the noble gas argon .
	Ludwig Boltzmann * 1844 in Vienna † 1906 in Duino near Trieste	Ludwig Boltzmann was one of the founders of statistical mechanics alongside James Clerk Maxwell ( Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution , Boltzmann equation ). He is known for his statistical interpretation of entropy .
	Hendrik Antoon Lorentz * 1853 in Arnhem † 1928 in Haarlem	Lorentz was one of the leading theoretical physicists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a professor in Leiden and is particularly known for his contributions to the electrodynamics of moving bodies in the run-up to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity . Lorentz transformation and Lorentz force are named after him here. He expanded Maxwell's theory in terms of optics and matter with the electron as a carrier of electrical charge. He received his Nobel Prize for explaining the Zeeman effect . He was also interested in applications, especially the large dike projects in Holland.
	Henri Poincaré * 1854 in Nancy † 1912 in Paris	Henri Poincaré was one of the most important mathematicians who made revolutionary contributions to topology, function theory and the theory of dynamic systems (celestial mechanics, qualitative theory of differential equations). In the latter area he is now considered to be one of the fathers of chaos theory . Later he turned to mathematical physics and is mainly known for research in advance of Einstein's theory of relativity. The Poincaré group is named after him here and the corresponding transformations. His work on the theory of dynamic systems also led to discussions about irreversibility, in which Boltzmann was involved ( recurrence theorem ).
	Joseph John Thomson * 1856 in Cheetham Hill near Manchester † 1940 in Cambridge	JJ Thomson was Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge as the successor to Lord Rayleigh and is known as the discoverer of the electron in cathode ray tubes, for which he received the Nobel Prize. Back then, others were on the same track (like Emil Wiechert ).
	Heinrich Hertz * 1857 in Hamburg † 1894 in Bonn	With his experimental proof of electromagnetic waves, Heinrich Hertz provided evidence of Maxwell's electromagnetic light theory and thereby opened up new wavelength ranges and laid the foundations of radio technology. The Hertzian dipole and Hertzian oscillator are named after him. He was a professor in Kiel and Bonn and, among other things, dealt with the impact of elastic bodies.

20th century and after

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen * 1845 in Lennep † 1923 in Munich	Röntgen was professor for experimental physics in Würzburg and discovered the rays named after him in 1895 . The discovery of a new type of radiation that penetrated the body and had medical uses sparked a flurry of research activity and made him the first ever Nobel Prize winner in physics. His X-rays were used in solid state physics by Nobel Prize winners Max von Laue , William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg .
	Max Planck * 1858 in Kiel † 1947 in Göttingen	As a professor of theoretical physics in Kiel and Berlin, he was considered a specialist in thermodynamics. With the quantum hypothesis he solved the problem of the black body and thus founded quantum physics , which owes its development and implementation in the early phase to Albert Einstein. Planck brought Einstein to Berlin and was the doyen of German physicists for a long time. Even in old age, thanks to his great reputation after the Second World War and the devastation of the National Socialists, he was still involved in the development of physics in Germany and gave its name to the Max Planck Society .
	Marie Curie * 1867 in Warsaw † 1934 in Sancellemoz	The research into the radioactivity discovered by Henri Becquerel is largely due to her and her husband Pierre Curie , with whom she worked closely. She discovered the chemical elements radium and polonium , among other things, and was the first female Nobel Prize winner in both physics and chemistry.
	Arnold Sommerfeld * 1868 in Königsberg (Prussia) † 1951 in Munich	Sommerfeld was for a long time the doyen of theoretical physicists in Germany and founded a school in Munich from which many later Nobel Prize winners such as Pauli and Heisenberg emerged and which had an international impact. He made important contributions to the older quantum theory, to the expansion of Bohr's atomic model and the first explanation of the fine structure of the hydrogen atom. But he also worked in many other areas of theoretical physics, which was reflected in his lectures. For example, he treated the diffraction problem in optics strictly mathematically and wrote an extensive work with the mathematician Felix Klein on gyroscopes.
	Ernest Rutherford * 1871 in Spring Grove (New Zealand) † 1937 in Cambridge	Rutherford was a central figure in early nuclear physics and was the head of a leading international school at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, of which he was director from 1919. He is believed to have discovered the atomic nucleus in the Rutherford experiment (from 1909). Later he demonstrated for the first time nuclear transformations through irradiation with alpha particles and discovered and named the proton in 1919 .
	Albert Einstein * 1879 in Ulm † 1955 in Princeton .	Einstein is considered the most important physicist of the 20th century, in particular as the founder of the special (1905) and general relativity theory (1916). He was considered unorthodox and began his career as an outsider at the patent office in Bern. He also made important contributions to early quantum physics , including a. quantitative explanation of the photo effect and the concept of the photon , but was later an opponent of the usual statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics ( God does not roll the dice ). At the beginning of his career he dealt with statistical mechanics and the explanation of Brownian motion by the atomic hypothesis, which was still controversial at the time. He was a professor in Prague, Zurich and Berlin, was expelled from Germany as a Jew by the Nazis and became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Actually a pacifist, in the face of possible threats in the Second World War in the United States, he initially campaigned for and then against the development and use of nuclear weapons. Scientifically, he endeavored to unite gravitation and electrodynamics in a unified field theory.
	Emmy Noether * 1882 in Erlangen † 1935 in Bryn Mawr	Emmy Noether was a German mathematician and one of the founders of modern algebra, but was also known for a fundamental contribution to physics. The Noether theorem named after her has become the mathematical basis of important physical conservation laws such as conservation of energy and momentum, and explained them through continuous symmetries.
	Max Born * 1882 in Breslau † 1970 in Göttingen	Born was a theoretical physicist who was closely associated with the Göttingen School of Quantum Mechanics and was a student of the mathematician David Hilbert , who was also interested in physics . With Pascual Jordan and Werner Heisenberg, he wrote some of the fundamental work on matrix mechanics (the mathematical background as matrix algebra came from Born) and provided the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics . The Born approximation and Born-Oppenheimer approximation are named after him. Other areas of work were, for example, lattice vibrations and optics, on which he wrote an important monograph with Emil Wolf. After 1933 he went to Edinburgh, but returned to Germany as a pensioner.
	James Franck * 1882 in Hamburg † 1964 in Göttingen	James Franck was the institute director for experimental physics in Göttingen during the heyday of the development of quantum mechanics. He received the Nobel Prize for the Franck-Hertz experiment carried out as a professor in Berlin with Gustav Hertz from 1912 to 1914 , an essential experimental confirmation of quantum theory. The Franck-Condon principle is named after him . Expelled by the National Socialists, he went to the USA.
	Otto Stern * 1888 in Sohrau † 1969 in Berkeley	Stern was a professor in Hamburg and went to the USA in 1933 after being expelled by the National Socialists. He is known for the Stern-Gerlach experiment to prove directional quantization in 1922 in Frankfurt with Walther Gerlach . He received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the molecular beam method .
	Peter Debye * 1884 in Maastricht † 1966 in Ithaca (New York)	The Dutchman Peter Debye was a Sommerfeld student and professor in Zurich, Leipzig and Berlin. He is best known for his contributions to physical chemistry ( Debye-Hückel theory of electrolytes, Debye radius ), quantum theory ( Debye theory of specific heat), X-ray diffraction ( Debye-Scherrer method , Debye-Waller factor ) and for example the microscopic explanation of permittivity ( Debye equation )
	Niels Bohr * 1885 in Copenhagen † 1962 ibid	Niels Bohr is considered one of the leading physicists of the 20th century. His school of physicists in Copenhagen was, along with Göttingen, one of the brood cells of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, and it was here that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics emerged with his significant contribution . Before that, he was one of the main founders of the older quantum theory with Bohr's atomic model . He later dealt particularly with nuclear physics ( droplet model ) - continued by his son Aage Bohr , who received the Nobel Prize for collective core models - and was able to maintain the leading position of his institute even after the Second World War, when the first location of the theory department of CERN was there . During World War II, he and his student Werner Heisenberg had a controversial discussion about the atom bomb in Copenhagen.
	Erwin Schrödinger * 1887 in Vienna † 1961 ibid	The versatile theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who mainly worked in Zurich, Berlin and most recently in Dublin, was one of the founders of quantum mechanics with wave mechanics following Born-Heisenberg's matrix mechanics and the Schrödinger equation from 1926. Since it was based on partial differential equations familiar to all physicists and not on the then new, difficult-to-use matrix algebra, it became the preferred route to quantum physics. Like Einstein, Schrödinger rejected the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics and later, like Einstein, dealt with unified field theories.
	Isidor Isaac Rabi * 1898 in Rymanów † 1988 in New York City	Rabi was a professor at Columbia University and one of the leading experimental physicists in the United States. He received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), which was further developed by Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell and from which important spectroscopic and imaging processes in medicine later developed.
	Wolfgang Pauli * 1900 in Vienna † 1958 in Zurich	The Sommerfeld student Pauli was considered a mathematical prodigy who wrote a standard work on the theory of relativity at the age of 20. He is known for numerous contributions to quantum theory, but especially for the introduction of spin degrees of freedom in the explanation of the spectra in the early phase of quantum theory, the exclusion principle for explaining the spectra and the shell structure of atoms and its explanation in the spin statistics theorem . The quantum mechanical description of the spin is done with the Pauli equation and Pauli matrices . In 1930 he predicted the neutrino and last dealt with meson theory and quantum field theory. Most recently he taught in Zurich and was internationally regarded as a sharp-tongued conscience in physics .
	Werner Heisenberg * 1901 in Würzburg † 1976 in Munich	The Sommerfeld student Heisenberg found the first version of quantum mechanics in Göttingen in 1925 in the form of matrix mechanics, to the interpretation of which he made a significant contribution with the uncertainty relation. He was later a professor in Leipzig, where he dealt with nuclear physics, among other things, was involved in the uranium project during the Second World War and therefore interned with others involved in Operation Epsilon in Farm Hall after the war, and after the war director at Max Planck -Institute for Physics first in Göttingen and then in Munich. Most recently he worked on a unified field theory of elementary particles.
	Enrico Fermi * 1901 in Rome † 1954 in Chicago	Fermi was one of the most important physicists of the 20th century and was active both experimentally and theoretically. Important contributions to quantum mechanics and experimental and theoretical nuclear physics , e.g. For example, under his leadership in Chicago, the first atomic reactor ( Chicago Pile ) was ready for operation and he found the statistics for particles with half-integer spin .
	Paul Dirac * 1902 in Bristol † 1984 in Tallahassee	Dirac was in Cambridge as a theorist and parallel to the physicists around Heisenberg, Born and Jordan in Göttingen, one of the founders of the formalism of quantum mechanics, on which he wrote his main work ( The Principles of Quantum Mechanics , 1930) and where he introduced basic procedures ( Bra -Ket notation , delta distribution , interaction picture , creation and annihilation operators , path integrals and others). He was best known for the Dirac equation with the Dirac matrices , the fundamental equation for fermions in relativistic quantum mechanics, which also predicts antiparticles (see Dirac Sea ), and the Fermi-Dirac statistics . His theory of magnetic monopoles and the Dirac hypothesis are also known .
	Pascual Jordan * 1902 in Hanover † 1980 in Hamburg	Pascual Jordan played a key role in the development and mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. In addition, his work established the quantum field theory. As the only founder of the quantum theory, he was denied the Nobel Prize.
	Eugene Paul Wigner * 1902 in Budapest † 1995 in Princeton	Eugene Wigner is best known for his treatment of symmetry principles and group theoretical methods in physics, especially in quantum mechanics, elementary particle physics (his basic representation theory of the Poincaré group ) and nuclear physics, which was one of his main fields of work. He was Hilbert's assistant in Göttingen and a professor in Berlin, Wisconsin and Princeton.
	Hans Bethe * 1906 in Strasbourg † 2005 in Ithaca (New York)	Hans Bethe was a Sommerfeld student and professor at Cornell University. He made various contributions to theoretical physics, solid state physics, quantum mechanics and especially nuclear physics, in which he had held a leading position since the 1930s. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project , emerged as a proponent of nuclear energy and later dealt mainly with astrophysics of compact stellar objects. He received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the generation of energy in stars in the 1930s ( Bethe-Weizsäcker cycle ).
	Lew Landau * 1908 in Baku † 1968 in Moscow	Landau was the leading theoretical physicist in the Soviet Union and founded a very influential school of theoretical physics there, although at times due to dissident statements he was in imminent danger of falling victim to the Stalin dictatorship, from which Pyotr Kapiza in particular saved him. His versatility can be seen in the many-volume textbook on theoretical physics with Lifschitz , but he is best known for his contributions to superfluids and phase transitions .
	John Bardeen * 1908 in Madison (Wisconsin) † 1991 in Boston	The theorist John Bardeen is best known for two achievements in solid state physics, for each of which he received a Nobel Prize: his participation in the development of the transistor and the BCS theory of superconductivity.
	John Archibald Wheeler * 1911 in Jacksonville (Florida) † 2008 in Hightstown, New Jersey	John Archibald Wheeler initially dealt with nuclear physics, introducing the S-matrix (independent of Heisenberg), but is best known for visionary ideas in gravitational theory and astrophysics, black holes and wormholes (both named by him), geometrodynamics and other. He was a professor at Princeton and wrote one of the standard works on gravitation with Kip Thorne and Charles Misner .
	Charles Hard Townes * 1915 in Greenville (South Carolina) † 2015	Townes developed the Maser concept in the 1950s and, together with Arthur Schawlow , recognized the possibility of expanding to include lasers. Most recently he dealt with radio and infrared astronomy, especially the observation of the black hole in the center of the Milky Way.
	Richard Feynman * 1918 in Queens † 1988 in Los Angeles	Feynman is one of the founders of quantum electrodynamics and the path integral description of quantum mechanics. He made many other contributions to theoretical physics and is best known for his Feynman lectures on physics and autobiographical writings, which together with an often unconventional point of view made him one of the best-known and most popular physicists in the USA. He was a professor at Caltech . The talk There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom made him a pioneer in nanotechnology and his interest in computers a pioneer in quantum computing .
	Julian Schwinger * 1918 in New York City † 1994 in Los Angeles	Schwinger was considered a child prodigy and was a pioneer of quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory (e.g. Schwinger-Dyson equation ), at the beginning of his career he was also responsible for contributions to nuclear physics, quantum mechanics (e.g. Lippmann-Schwinger equation ) and electromagnetic Waves (e.g. synchrotron radiation ) known. He was a professor at Harvard and later in Los Angeles.
	Chen Ning Yang * 1922 in Hefei	Yang initially formed a research team with Tsung-Dao Lee and they attracted attention with work ranging from the Ising model to predicting parity violation . For the latter they received the Nobel Prize. They later parted ways. He is also known for formulating the Yang-Mills theories , which form the basis for describing the interactions in the Standard Model .
	Murray Gell-Mann * 1929 in New York City † 2019 in Santa Fe	From the 1950s onwards, Gell-Mann contributed like no other to elementary particle theory, in particular with the formulation of the quark concept, but also with the introduction of strangeness and the establishment of quantum chromodynamics . He later turned to the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and complex systems. He was a professor at Caltech.
	Steven Weinberg * 1933 in New York City	Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam are considered to be the founder of the electroweak theory , the union of weak and electromagnetic interaction and one of the cornerstones of the Standard Model . He also studied cosmology and is known to the public for the popular science book The First Three Minutes .
	David Gross * 1941 in Washington, DC	With the discovery of Asymptotic Freedom with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, David Gross provided the discovery of an important aspect of QCD that established its role as the theory of strong interaction. Later, for example, he made important contributions to the superstring program, which has been popular since the 1980s as a candidate for a fundamental theory .
	Stephen Hawking * 1942 in Oxford † 2018 in Cambridge	Hawking made essential contributions to the theory of gravity, for example the proof of the inevitability of singularities in general relativity (GTR) with Roger Penrose , who demonstrated their fundamental limitation, and on the other hand his quantum theory of black holes, which is the interface between the two fundamental theories GTR and quantum mechanics illuminated. Despite being confined to a wheelchair, he took a leading role in theoretical physics and also became a popular public figure similar to Feynman.
	Gerardus' t Hooft * 1946 in Den Helder	Gerardus' t Hooft made important contributions to the quantum field theory of elementary particles, first by showing with Martinus Veltman that Yang Mills theories can also be renormalized with massive gauge bosons and thus fulfill an important prerequisite for their acceptance as the basis of the Standard Model . He was later one of the architects of the holographic principle (with Leonard Susskind ).