- Max Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and therefore one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century.
- Niels Bohr
Niels (Henrik David) Bohr was a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1922. He was also part of the team of physicists working on the Manhattan Project. Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund in 1912, and one of their sons Aage Niels Bohr grew up to be an important physicist, who like his father received the Nobel prize.
- Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, (born 8 January1942) is a British theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes, and his popular works in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general.
- Max Perutz
Max Ferdinand Perutz, OM (May 19 1914 - February 6 2002) was an Austrian-British molecular biologist. He was born in Vienna in 1914. In 1936 he became a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory in a crystallography group directed by J.D. Bernal, and remained in Cambridge subsequently.
- Fotis Kafatos
Fotis C. Kafatos (born in Heraklion,Crete, Greece) is a prominent Greek biologist. Kafatos received his Bachelor's degree at Cornell University, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1965). He was Assistant Professor and later Professor and Chairman of the department of Cellular and Developmental Biology of Harvard University, Professor of Biology at the University of Athens and at the University of Crete, …
- Paul Dirac
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM, FRS (August 8, 1902 - October 20, 1984) was a British theoretical physicist and a founder of the field of quantum mechanics. He held the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and spent the last ten years of his life at Florida State University. Among other discoveries, he formulated the so-called "Dirac equation," which describes the behavior of fermions and which led to the prediction of the existence of antimatter.
- Georges Lemaître
Father Georges Henri Joseph Éduard Lemaître was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, professor of physics and astronomer. Fr. (later Msgr.) Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, although he called it his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'. He was a pioneer in applying Einstein's theory of general relativity to cosmology: suggesting a pre-cursor of Hubble's law in 1927, …
- Michael Heller
Michael Heller, (birth: October 14, 1936 - USA) is a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff. He also serves as a lecturer in the philosophy of science and logic at the Theological Institute in Tarnow. A Roman Catholic priest, Dr. Heller was ordained in 1959.
- Tsung-Dao Lee
During the years 1950-53, Lee worked as a research associate and lecturer at Yerkes Astronomical Observatory, Wisconsin; at the University of California at Berkeley, and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J. Lee was then fast becoming a widely known scientist, especially for his work in elementary particles, statistical mechanics, field theory, astrophysics, condensed matter physics and turbulence, having solved several problems of long standing and great complexity.
- Antonino Zichichi
Antonino Zichichi (born october 15 1929) is an Italian physicist who has worked in the field of nuclear physics.
- David Baltimore
David Baltimore (b. March 7, 1938) is an American biologist and one of the recipients of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he was the president from 1997 to 2006. He is also currently the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Baltimore was born in New York City.
- Aage Niels Bohr
Aage Niels Bohr (born June 19 1922 in Copenhagen) is a Danish physicist and the son of Margrethe and Niels Bohr. Growing up among physicists like Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg, he became a notable nuclear physicist in his own right, being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975. In 1946, he became an associate at the Niels Bohr Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen. He served as the director of the institute from 1963 to 1970.
- Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian - Irish physicist who achieved fame for his contributions to quantum mechanics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1933. In 1935, he proposed the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment.
- E. T. Whittaker
Edmund Taylor Whittaker (24 October1873 - 24 March1956) was an English mathematician, who contributed widely to applied mathematics, mathematical physics and the theory of special functions. He had a particular interest in numerical analysis, but also worked on celestial mechanics and the history of applied mathematics and the history of physics. He was born in Southport, in Merseyside(at that time in Lancashire)
- Chen Ning Yang
Zhen-Ning Franklin Yang (born 22 September, 1922) is a Chinese-born American physicist who worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles. In 1957, at the age of 35, he and Tsung-Dao Lee received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their theory that weak force interactions between elementary particles did not have parity (mirror-reflection) symmetry.
- Ahmed Zewail
Ahmed Hassan Zewail (born February 26 1946 in Damanhur, Egypt) is an Egyptian American chemist, and the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry. Born in Damanhur (60 km south-east of Alexandria) and raised in Disuq, he received his first degree from the University of Alexandria before moving from Egypt to the United States to complete his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. After some post doctorate work at the University of California, …
- Carlos Chagas Filho
Carlos Chagas Filho was a Brazilian physician, biologist and scientist active in the field of neuroscience. He was internationally renowned for his investigations on the neural mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of electrogenesis by the electroplaques of electric fishes.
- Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a celebrated German physicist and Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, and acknowledged to be one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. He was born in Würzburg, Germany and died in Munich. Heisenberg was the head of German nuclear energy project, though the nature of this project, and his work in this capacity, has been heavily debated.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini
Rita Levi-Montalcini (born April 22, 1909) is an Italian neurologist who, together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of growth factors. Today she is the oldest living Nobel laureate.
- John Carew Eccles
Sir John Carew Eccles (January 27, 1903 - May 2, 1997) was an Australian neurophysiologist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse. He shared the prize together with Andrew Fielding Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin.
- George Coyne
George V. Coyne, S.J. is a Jesuit priest, astronomer, and former director of the Vatican Observatory and head of the observatory’s research group which is based at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.
- Charles Hard Townes
Charles Hard Townes (born July 28, 1915) is an American Nobel Prize-winning physicist and educator. Townes is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he got the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices. He received a B.A. and B.S. from Furman University, an M.A. from Duke University, a Ph.D. from Caltech, and is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
- Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji is a French physicist working at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. Cohen-Tannoudji was born in Constantine to Algerian Jewish parents, when Algeria was still part of France. After primary and secondary studies in Algiers, Cohen-Tannoudji left Algeria for Paris to attend the École normale supérieure. Lectures were given by Henri Cartan, Laurent Schwartz or Alfred Kastler. In 1958 he married Jacqueline, a high school teacher, …
- Har Gobind Khorana
Har Gobind Khorana (born January 9, 1922) is an American molecular biologist born of Indian Punjabi heritage in British India. He was awarded the Nobel prize (shared with Robert W. Holley and Marshall Warren Nirenberg) in 1968 for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1966.
- Abdus Salam
Abdus Salam (January 29, 1926 at Santokdas, Sahiwal in Punjab - November 21, 1996 in Oxford, England) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for his work in Electro-Weak Theory which is the mathematical and conceptual synthesis of the Electromagnetic and Weak interactions, the latest stage in the effort to provide a unified description of the four fundamental forces of nature.
- Edward Witten
Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American mathematical physicist, Fields Medalist, and professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is one of the world's leading researchers in string theory (as the founder of M-theory) and quantum field theory.
- Vera Rubin
Vera (Cooper) Rubin (born 23 July 1928) is an astronomer who has done pioneering work on galaxy rotation rates. Her discovery of what is known as "flat rotation curves" is the most direct and robust evidence of dark matter. After she earned an A.B. from Vassar College (1948) she tried to enroll at Princeton but never received their graduate catalog as women there were not allowed in the graduate astronomy program until 1975.
- Werner Arber
Werner Arber is a Swiss microbiologist and geneticist. Along with American researchers Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans, Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction endonuclei. Their work would lead to the development of recombinant DNA technology. Werner Arber studied chemistry and physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich from 1949 to 1953.
- George Porter
George Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham, OM, FRS (December 6, 1920 - August 31, 2002) was a British chemist. Porter was born in Stainforth, Yorkshire. He won a scholarship to the University of Leeds and gained his first degree in chemistry. He then served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War. Porter then went on to do research at Cambridge under Norrish where he began the work that ultimately led to them becoming Nobel Laureates.
- Paul Berg
Paul Berg (born June 30, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is an American biochemist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1943, received his B.S. in biochemistry from Penn State University in 1948 and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1952. In 1980 he shared half of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the team of Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger.
- Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon, biologist and eugenicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912. He was also a member of Jacques Doriot's Parti Populaire Français (PPF), the most collaborationist party during Vichy France.
- Peter H. Raven
Peter Hamilton Raven (b. June 13, 1936) is a botanist and environmentalist, notable as the longtime director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Raven was born in China to American parents. An uncle of his father's was, for a time, one of the wealthiest Americans in China, but was later jailed in a banking scandal. That incident and Japanese aggression in China led the Raven family to return to San Francisco in the late 1930s.
- Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini
"His Eminence" Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, SJ (born 15 February 1927) is an Italian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the archbishop of Milan from 1980 to 2002, and has been a cardinal since 1983. Often considered to be one of the more "progressive" members of the College of Cardinals, he has achieved widespread notice for his wide-ranging and open-minded writings - popularity in some circles, criticism in others.
- Paul J. Crutzen
Paul Jozef Crutzen (born December 3, 1933, Amsterdam) is a Dutch Nobel prize winning atmospheric chemist. Crutzen is best known for his research on ozone depletion. He lists his main research interests as "Stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry, and their role in the biogeochemical cycles and climate". He currently works at the Department of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, in Mainz, …
- Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi [gue:lmo mar'ko:ni] (25 April 1874 - 20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".
- Manfred Eigen
Manfred Eigen is a German biophysicist and a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. In 1967, he was awarded, along with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and George Porter, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They were distinguished for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions induced in response to very short pulses of energy. In addition, his name is linked with the theory of the chemical hypercycle, …
- Jürgen Mittelstraß
Jürgen Mittelstraß is a German philosopher especially interested in the philosophy of science. He was born in Düsseldorf in 1936 and studied philosophy, history and protestant theology at Bonn, Erlangen, Hamburg and Oxford from 1956 till 1961. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Erlangen in 1961, where he afterwards wrote his habilitation until 1968. He was influenced by the "Erlanger Konstruktivismus".
- Gary Becker
Gary Stanley Becker (born December 2, 1930) is an economist and a Nobel laureate. Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Becker earned a B.A. at Princeton University in 1951 and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1955. He taught at Columbia University from 1957 to 1968, and then returned to Chicago, where he holds joint appointments with the department of economics and sociology and the graduate school of business.
- Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (born January 25, 1922) is an Italian population geneticist born in Genoa, who has been a professor at Stanford University since 1970 (now emeritus).
- Carlo Rubbia
Carlo Rubbia (born March 31, 1934) is an Italian physicist and Nobel laureate.