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The three major employers of career physicists are academic institutions, government laboratories, and private industries, with the largest employer being the last.[2] Many trained physicists, however, apply their skills to other activities, in particular to
engineering,
computing, and
finance, often quite successfully. Some physicists take up additional careers where their knowledge of physics can be combined with further training in other disciplines, such as
patent law in industry or private practice. In the United States, a majority of those in the private sections having a physics degree actually work outside the fields of physics, astronomy and engineering altogether.[3]
The following is a gallery of highly influential and important figures in the history of physics. For a list that includes even more people, see
list of physicists.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543): published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in 1543 - often considered the starting point of modern astronomy - in which he argued that the Earth and the other planets revolved around the Sun (
heliocentrism)
Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642): discovered the uniform acceleration rate of falling bodies, improved on the refracting telescope, discovered the
four largest moons of
Jupiter, described projectile motion and the concept of weight; known for championing of the Copernican theory of heliocentricism against Church opposition.
Johannes Kepler (1571—1630): used the accurate observations of
Tycho Brahe to formulate
three fundamental laws of planetary motion, described elliptical motion of planets around the sun, developed early telescopes, invented the convex eyepiece, discovered a means of determining the magnifying power of lenses.
Evangelista Torricelli (1608 - 1647): invented the
barometer (a glass tube of
mercury inverted into a dish), found that the change of height of the mercury each day was from
atmospheric pressure, worked in
geometry and developed
integral calculus, published findings on fluid and projectile motion in his 1644 Opera Geometrica (Geometric Works)
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662): experimented with
fluids, formulated
Pascal's law in the 1650s stating that the
pressure applied to a fluid taken in a closed container is transmitted with equal force throughout the container, proved that air has weight and that air pressure can produce a
vacuum, namesake of the unit of pressure: the
pascal (Pa)
Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703): formulated the
law of elasticity, invented the balance spring, the spiral spring wheel in watches, the Gregorian telescope, and the first screw-divided quadrant, constructed first arithmetical machine, improved cell theory with the microscope
Henry Cavendish (1731 - 1810): greatest English chemist and physicist of his age, researched composition of
the atmosphere, the properties of different gases, the synthesis of water, the law of electrical attraction and repulsion, a mechanical theory of heat, calculated the weight of the Earth in the
Cavendish experiment, determined the universal
gravitational constant
Thomas Young (1773 - 1829): established the principle of interference of light, resurrected the century-old theory that light is a wave, helped decipher the
Rosetta Stone
André-Marie Ampère (1777 - 1836): main founder of
electrodynamics, showed how an electric current produces a magnetic field, stated that the mutual action of two lengths of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and to the intensities of their currents (
Ampère's law), namesake of the unit of electric current (the
ampere)
Georg Ohm (1789 - 1854): found that there is a direct proportionality between the
electric current I and the potential difference (
voltage) V applied across a conductor, and that this current is inversely proportional to the
resistance R in the circuit, or I = V/R, known as
Ohm's law, namesake of the unit of electrical resistance (the
ohm)
Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867): showed how a changing magnetic field can be used to generate an electric current (
Faraday's law of induction), applied this knowledge to the development of several electrical machines, described principles of
electrolysis, early pioneer in the field of low temperature study
Christian Doppler (1803 - 1853): first described how the observed frequency of light and sound waves is affected by the relative motion of the source and the detector, a phenomenon which became known as the
Doppler effect.
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844 - 1906): developed
statistical mechanics (how the properties of atoms – mass, charge, and structure – determine the visible properties of matter, such as viscosity,
thermal conductivity, and diffusion), developed the kinetic theory of gases.
Edward Alexander Bouchet (1852-1918): First African American to earn a PhD in physics. Overcame racial prejudice and continual financial uncertainty to pursue a life long career in physics.
Hendrik Lorentz (1853 – 1928): clarified electromagnetic theory of light, shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect, developed concept of local time, derived the
transformation equations subsequently used by Albert Einstein to describe space and time.
J. J. Thomson (1856 - 1940): showed in 1897 that
cathode rays were composed of a previously unknown negatively charged particle (later named the
electron), discovered
isotopes, invented the
mass spectrometer, awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the electron and for his work on the conduction of
electricity in
gases.
Max Planck (1858 - 1947): founded
quantum mechanics in 1900, showed how the energy of a
photon is proportional to its frequency, won him the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics
Marie Curie (1867 - 1934): discovered radioactivity with
Henri Becquerel and her husband
Pierre Curie, awarded Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) and the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1911), found techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, discovered and isolated
polonium and
radium
Ernest Rutherford (1871 - 1937): considered "Father of
Nuclear Physics", showed how the
atomic nucleus has a positive charge, first to change one element into another by an artificial nuclear reaction, differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation, awarded Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908
Emmy Noether (1882-1935): Received a Ph.D. degree from the
University of Erlangen in 1907, with a dissertation on
algebraic invariant. Proved two deep theorems, and their converses, on the connection between symmetries and conservation laws- these theorems which physicists refer to collectively as
Noether's Theorem, brought clarity to the principle of energy conservation in Einstein's theory of
general relativity.
Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962): used quantum mechanical model (known as the
Bohr model) of the atom which theorized that electrons travel in discrete orbits around the nucleus, showed how electron energy levels are related to spectral lines, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
Louis de Broglie (1892 - 1987): researched quantum theory, discovered the wave nature of electrons, awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics, ideas on the wave-like behavior of particles used by Erwin Schrödinger in his formulation of wave mechanics.
Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974):Prof. Satyendra Nath Bose FRS,1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian physicist specializing in mathematical physics. He was born in Kolkata, then Calcutta. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the
Bose–Einstein condensate. The class of particles that obey
Bose-Einstein statistics, bosons, was named after him by Paul Dirac.
Pyotr Kapitsa (1894-1984): in 1934 developed apparatus (based on the
adiabatic principle) for making liquid helium, leading to the discovery in 1937 of its
superfluidity. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 "for discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics", shared with
Arno Allan Penzias and
Robert Woodrow Wilson
Werner Heisenberg (1901 - 1976): developed method to express ideas of quantum mechanics in terms of matrices in 1925, published his famous
uncertainty principle in 1927, awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932
Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984): made fundamental contributions to the early development of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, formulated the
Dirac equation describing the behavior of
fermions, predicted the existence of
antimatter, shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with
Erwin Schrödinger.
Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906-1972): As a
theoretical physicist, she received the Nobel prize in Physics for developing a mathematical model of the atomic nucleus, explaining spin-orbit coupling with a shell model of the nucleus. She was the second woman to ever receive a Nobel prize in physics.
John Wheeler (1911 - 2008): revived interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II, worked with Niels Bohr to explain principles of nuclear fission, tried to achieve Einstein’s vision of a
unified field theory, coined the terms
black hole,
quantum foam,
wormhole, and the phrase “
it from bit”.
Henry Way Kendall (1926-1999): particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990 jointly with
Jerome Isaac Friedman and
Richard E. Taylor "for their pioneering investigations concerning
deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the
quark model in particle physics.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958): Major contribution to the field of promoting astrophysics. More than 60 televised interviews, a regular column in Natural History magazine and author of twelve books- he is currently the nations most recognized
astrophysicist.
Hermanowicz, Joseph C. (1998). The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists--Their Passions and Professions. University of Chicago Press.
ISBN978-0-226-32767-9.
Hermanowicz, Joseph C. (2009). Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers. University of Chicago Press.
ISBN978-0-226-32761-7.
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