National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Roland Eotvos
Vasarosnamenyi Baro Eotvos Lorand, better known as Roland Eotvos or Lorand Eotvos throughout much of the world, was a Hungarian physicist who is most recognized for his extensive experimental work involving gravity, but who also made...
Florida State University
Florida State University: Science, Optics & You: Nicolaus Copernicus
Biography of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the scientist who first put forward the theory that the Sun was the center of the universe.
Florida State University
Florida State University: Science, Optics & You: Augustin Jean Fresnel
Biography of Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827), a French physicist best known for his pioneering work in optics.
Florida State University
Florida State University: Science, Optics & You: Albert Einstein
Biography of Albert Einstein (1879-1955), one of the most famous physicists of the last century, best known for his theory of relativity.
Other
Finding Dulcinea: Marie Curie
Article on Marie Curie, who won two Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry for her discoveries in radioactivity and radioactive elements.
Science Museum, London
Science Museum: Online Stuff: Marie Curie and the History of Radioactivity
Read about Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie's life, and her historical work with radioactivity.
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Gerd Binnig
Gerd Binnig co-developed the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) with Heinrich Rohrer. The STM allowed scientists entry into the atomic world in a new way and was a major advance in the field of nanotechnology. For their achievement,...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Georg Bednorz
J. Georg Bednorz jointly revolutionized superconductivity research with K. Alex Muller by discovering an entirely new class of superconductors, often referred to as high-temperature superconductors. They managed to achieve...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Paul Dirac
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was an outstanding twentieth century theoretical physicist whose work was fundamental to the development of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Heinrich Hertz
The discovery of radio waves, which was widely seen as confirmation of James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and paved the way for numerous advances in communication technology, was made by German physicist Heinrich Hertz. In the...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Joseph Henry
Joseph Henry was an American scientist who pioneered the construction of strong, practical electromagnets and built one of the first electromagnetic motors. During his experiments with electromagnetism, Henry discovered the property of...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Murray Gell Mann
Murray Gell-Mann is a theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1969 for his contributions to elementary particle physics. He is particularly well known for his role in bringing organization into the world of subatomic...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz
At the turn of the 19th century, scientists were beginning to gain a rudimentary understanding of electricity and magnetism, but they knew almost nothing about the relationship between the two. Baltic German physicist Heinrich Lenz took...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Lev Davidovich Landau
While growing up in the Soviet Union, Lev Landau was so far ahead of his classmates that he was ready to begin college at age 13. His parents noticed a particular gift for math in their young son, who was considered a prodigy. It came as...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Klaus Von Klitzing
Klaus von Klitzing is a Nobel laureate who won the award in 1985 for his discovery of the quantized Hall effect, sometimes referred to as the quantum Hall effect. Von Klitzing's discovery resulted from his work exploring a phenomenon...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Jack Kilby
The integrated circuit fueled the rise of microelectronics in the latter half of the twentieth century and paved the way for the Information Age. An American engineer, Jack Kilby, invented the integrated circuit in 1958, shortly after he...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: James Joule
James Prescott Joule experimented with engines, electricity and heat throughout his life. Joule's findings resulted in his development of the mechanical theory of heat and Joule's law, which quantitatively describes the rate at which...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Karl Jansky
Karl Jansky discovered extraterrestrial radio waves while investigating possible sources of interference in shortwave radio communications across the Atlantic for Bell Laboratories, and is often known as the father of radio astronomy....
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch physicist who first observed the phenomenon of superconductivity while carrying out pioneering work in the field of cryogenics. An important step on the way to this discovery was his success in...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Hans Christian Orsted
A discovery by Hans Christian Orsted forever changed the way scientists think about electricity and magnetism. While preparing to perform an experiment during a lecture at the University of Copenhagen, he found that the magnetized needle...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell was one of the most influential scientists of the nineteenth century. His theoretical work on electromagnetism and light largely determined the direction that physics would take in the early twentieth century. Indeed,...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Max Planck
In a career that lasted seven decades, Max Planck achieved an enduring legacy with groundbreaking discoveries involving the relationship between heat and energy, but he is most remembered as the founder of the "quantum theory."
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Julian Schwinger
Theoretical physicist Julian Schwinger used the mathematical process of renormalization to rid the quantum field theory developed by Paul Dirac of serious incongruities with experimental observations that had nearly prompted the...
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Magnet Academy: Isidor Isaac Rabi
Isidor Isaac Rabi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his development of a technique for measuring the magnetic characteristics of atomic nuclei. Rabi's technique was based on the resonance principle first described by Irish...