Curated playlist
Fellows of the American Physical Society
- Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize partly for new elements that were really fission products.
- John Archibald WheelerJohn Archibald Wheeler spent decades calling a dying star a "gravitationally completely collapsed object."
- Carl SaganCarl Sagan once asked a librarian for a book on stars and got one about movie stars.
- American Physical SocietyThirty-six physicists met at Columbia University in 1899 and founded the American Physical Society.
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger formulated his wave equation at a Swiss sanatorium in Arosa. He was ill with tuberculosis.
- Nathan RosenNathan Rosen co-authored the first known wormhole paper in July 1935. He was Albert Einstein's assistant at the time.
- Richard FeynmanRichard Feynman's last words, spoken after a long coma, were "This dying is boring." The remark suited an American theoretical physicist who never lost his taste for blunt, irreverent honesty. He was a man who treated authority, ceremony…
- Yang Chen-NingYang Chen-Ning, the theoretical physicist also known as C.N. Yang and Franklin Yang, died in Beijing on the 18th of October 2025. He was 103 years old. The day after his death was announced, people gathered at Tsinghua University and…
- John von NeumannJohn von Neumann's father asked Theodore von Kármán to talk his son out of mathematics.
- John SingletonAt 24, John Singleton became the first African American nominated for the Best Director Oscar.
- Edward TellerEdward Teller stood and watched the Trinity test while nearly everyone else lay face-down.
- Eric Allin CornellIn 1995, Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman made the first Bose-Einstein condensate. It is a new state of matter.
- Eugene WignerPhysicist Eugene Wigner found that neutron radiation could make the graphite in a reactor swell.
- Sally RideSally Ride quietly passed along the key clue to what caused the Challenger explosion.
- Hermann WeylMathematician Hermann Weyl fled Germany in 1933 after once refusing to leave. His wife was Jewish.
- George GamowGeorge Gamow added Hans Bethe's name to a physics paper as a prank. Bethe had not written a word of it.
- Avi LoebIn 2024, Avi Loeb stood before an audience and declared his view that the Messiah will be an alien arriving from outer space. Loeb is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist whose formal name is Abraham Loeb. He was born on the 26th of…
- Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon, then spent his life trying to limit its damage.
- Boris PodolskyPhysicist Boris Podolsky may have sold Soviet agents a public science law for $300.
- Gerald HoltonGerald Holton was labeled an "Enemy Alien" in America, yet Harvard hired him. He taught naval officers to use radar.
- Peter BergmannPeter Bergmann's mother wrote to Einstein in 1933 asking him to take her son as a student.
- Neil deGrasse TysonNeil deGrasse Tyson was nine years old when he visited the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He grew up to be an American astrophysicist, author and science communicator, born on the 5th of October 1958. Looking back, he…
- Linus PaulingLinus Pauling left high school without a diploma. He later won two unshared Nobel Prizes, a first in history.
- Peter DebyeA unit of measurement, a lunar crater and a minor planet all carry Peter Debye's name.
- Lee SmolinLee Smolin dropped out of high school and took up Einstein's unfinished work. He called it his mission.
- John G. TrumpJohn G. Trump died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 21st of February 1985, six days before a White House ceremony in his honor. His son John Jr. accepted the National Medal of Science on his behalf. President Ronald Reagan had awarded…
- Kip ThorneKip Thorne is an American astrophysicist whose life's work converged on a single announcement. On the 11th of February 2016, four physicists speaking for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration said that their instrument had recorded two black…