Jewish Atheists - Formal, Natural and Applied Sciences - Physics

Physics

• Zhores Alferov* - Soviet and Russian physicist and academic who contributed significantly to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics. He is an inventor of the heterotransistor and the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.
• Hans Bethe* - German-American nuclear physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. A versatile theoretical physicist, Bethe also made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and astrophysics. During World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory which developed the first atomic bombs. There he played a key role in calculating the critical mass of the weapons, and did theoretical work on the implosion method used in both the Trinity test and the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
• David Bohm (agnostic) - American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology.
• Niels Bohr* (1885-1962): Danish physicist. Best known for his foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
• David Deutsch - Israeli-British physicist at the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by being the first person to formulate a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer.
• Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933): Austrian-Dutch physicist. Made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics.
• Albert Einstein* (agnostic nontheist, self-described Spinozist) – influential German-born physicist, developed general theory of relativity, father of modern physics, Nobel Prize in Physics. See also Religious views of Albert Einstein
• James Franck* - German physicist. Won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925.
• Richard Feynman* (positive atheist) – American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics, Nobel Prize in Physics
• Jerome I. Friedman* (agnostic) - American physicist. In 1968-1969, commuting between MIT and California, he conducted experiments with Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center which gave the first experimental evidence that protons had an internal structure, later known to be quarks. For this, Friedman, Kendall and Taylor shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
• Roy J. Glauber* (agnostic) - American theoretical physicist. He was awarded one half of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence", with the other half shared by John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch.
• Vitaly Ginzburg* – Soviet theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, a member of the Russian Academy of Science, one of the fathers of Soviet hydrogen bomb, Nobel Prize in Physics
• David Gross* (agnostic) - American particle physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom.
• Alan Guth - American theoretical physicist and cosmologist.
• Lawrence Krauss (1954-): Professor of physics at Arizona State University and popularizer of science. Krauss speaks regularly at atheist conferences, like Beyond Belief and Atheist Alliance International.
• Lev Landau* - Soviet physicist. He received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of superfluidity.
• Leon M. Lederman* - American physicist who, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988 for their joint research on neutrinos.
• Murray Gell-Mann* (agnostic) - American physicist and linguist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles.
• Albert Abraham Michelson* (agnostic) - American physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the Michelson-Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• Frank Oppenheimer (1912–1985): American particle physicist, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, and the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. A younger brother of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer conducted research on aspects of nuclear physics during the time of the Manhattan Project, and made contributions to uranium enrichment.
• J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967): American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project.
• Saul Perlmutter* (agnostic) - American astrophysicist. He shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Brian P. Schmidt and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
• Marshall Rosenbluth - American physicist, nicknamed "the Pope of Plasma Physics". He created the Metropolis algorithm in statistical mechanics, derived the Rosenbluth formula in high-energy physics, and laid the foundations for instability theory in plasma physics.
• Józef Rotblat* (agnostic), Polish-British physicist. Along with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.
• Lee Smolin - American theoretical physicist, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo.
• Leonard Susskind - American theoretical physicist; a founding father of superstring theory and professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University.
• Leo Szilard (agnostic) - Austro-Hungarian physicist and inventor.
• Edward Teller (agnostic) - Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb". Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects), and surface physics.
• Joseph Weber - American physicist, who gave the earliest public lecture on the principles behind the laser and the maser, and developed the first gravitational wave detectors (Weber bars).
• Steven Weinberg* – American theoretical physicist, unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, share of the Nobel Prize in Physics
• Victor Frederick Weisskopf – Austrian-born American theoretical physicist.
• Eugene Wigner* (agnostic) - Hungarian American theoretical physicist and mathematician. He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"; the other half of the award was shared between Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. Wigner is important for having laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics as well as for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus. It was Eugene Wigner who first identified Xe-135 "poisoning" in nuclear reactors, and for this reason it is sometimes referred to as Wigner poisoning. Wigner is also important for his work in pure mathematics, having authored a number of theorems.
• Edward Witten - American theoretical physicist with a focus on mathematical physics who is a professor of Mathematical Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study. Witten is a researcher in superstring theory, a theory of quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories and other areas of mathematical physics.
• Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich – prolific Soviet physicist born in Belarus, played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, made important contributions to the fields of adsorption and catalysis, shock waves, nuclear physics, particle physics, astrophysics, physical cosmology, and general relativity.