Curated category
Fellows of the American Physical Society
- Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi paced off the distance that strips of paper were blown by a blast wave on the 16th of July 1945, and from that simple measurement he calculated…
- John Archibald WheelerJohn Archibald Wheeler spent decades trying to describe a dying star in plain language, and the best he could manage was "gravitationally completely…
- Carl SaganCarl Sagan grew up in a modest Bensonhurst apartment with parents who, by his own account, "knew almost nothing about science." Yet it was precisely those…
- American Physical SocietyThe American Physical Society was born on the 20th of May, 1899, when thirty-six physicists gathered at Columbia University and declared they would advance…
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger was born on the 12th of August 1887 in Vienna, and by the time he died on the 4th of January 1961, he had left behind an equation that…
- Nathan RosenNathan Rosen was born on the 22nd of March 1909 into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. The Great Depression shaped his early years as he attended…
- John von NeumannJohn von Neumann once told a colleague that the second incompleteness theorem had struck a harder blow to mathematics than even its discoverer believed.
- John SingletonJohn Daniel Singleton walked into the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 as a 23-year-old first-time director, his debut feature Boyz n the Hood already drawing…
- Edward TellerEdward Teller watched the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945 while almost everyone else lay face-down on the ground with their backs turned.
- Eric Allin CornellEric Allin Cornell was born on the 19th of December, 1961, in Palo Alto, California, to parents who were finishing graduate degrees at Stanford University.
- Eugene WignerEugene Paul Wigner once quipped that he never expected to see his name in the newspapers "without doing something wicked" - yet in 1963, the Nobel Committee…
- Sally RideSally Kristen Ride was born on the 26th of May, 1951, in Santa Monica, California, and died on the 23rd of July, 2012, having spent more than 343 hours in…
- Hermann WeylWhenever Michael Atiyah turned his attention to a mathematical topic, he kept running into the same name. He found that Hermann Weyl had already been there…
- George GamowGeorgiy Antonovich Gamow was born in Odessa, Russian Empire, now Odesa, Ukraine. His father taught Russian language and literature while his mother taught…
- Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov was the man who built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon and then spent the rest of his life trying to limit the damage it could do.
- Boris PodolskyBoris Yakovlevich Podolsky entered the world on the 29th of June 1896 in Taganrog. This port city sat within the Don Host Oblast of the Russian Empire.
- Gerald HoltonGerald James Holton was born on the 23rd of May 1922, in Berlin, Germany. He grew up in a Jewish family where his father worked as an attorney specializing…
- Peter BergmannPeter Gabriel Bergmann was born in Berlin on the 24th of March 1915, into a family that would scatter across the globe under the weight of Nazi persecution.
- Linus PaulingLinus Carl Pauling stands alone in the history of Nobel Prizes. He is the only person ever to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, one for Chemistry…
- Peter DebyePeter Debye was born in Maastricht in the Netherlands on the 24th of March 1884, and by the time he died on the 2nd of November 1966, his name had been…
- Lee SmolinLee Smolin dropped out of Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. That might seem like an unlikely starting point for one of the most provocative…