List of Jewish American Physicists

This is a list of famous Jewish American physicists. For other famous Jewish Americans, see List of Jewish Americans.

  • Ralph Alpher, background radiation, nucleosynthesis
  • John Bahcall, astrophysicist
  • Hans Bethe, nuclear physicist, Nobel Prize (1967) (Jewish mother)
  • Felix Bloch, nuclear physicist, Nobel Prize (1952) (naturalized citizen)
  • David Bohm, quantum physicist, philosopher of science
  • Gregory Breit, physicist
  • Albert Einstein (German) theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize (1921) (naturalized citizen)
  • Paul Sophus Epstein, theoretical physicist, quantum mechanics
  • Herman Feshbach, nuclear physicist
  • Richard P. Feynman, physicist, Nobel Prize (1965) (though he always refused to appear in lists such as this one and other lists or books that classified people by race )
  • David Finkelstein, physicist
  • James Franck, physicist, Nobel Prize (1925)
  • Edward Fredkin, digital physicist
  • Jerome Friedman, physicist, Nobel Prize (1990)
  • Murray Gell-Mann, quarks, Nobel Prize (1969)
  • Sheldon Glashow, physicist, Nobel Prize (1979)
  • Donald A. Glaser, bubble chamber, Nobel Prize (1960)
  • Roy Glauber, physicist, Nobel Prize (2005)
  • Samuel Goudsmit, electron spin
  • Brian Greene, string theorist
  • Herbert Goldstein, Columbia physicist, author of standard textbook on classical mechanics.
  • David Gross, string theorist, Nobel Prize (2004)
  • Alan Guth, cosmic inflation
  • Eugene Guth, polymer physics, nuclear physics, solid state physics
  • Robert Herman, cosmology, background radiation, operations research
  • Robert Hofstadter, physicist, Nobel Prize (1961)
  • Robert Jastrow, physicist, astronomer, cosmologist
  • Herman Kahn, nuclear physicist
  • Theodore von Kármán, aeronautical engineer
  • Daniel Kleppner, atomic research
  • Walter Kohn, physicist, Nobel Prize (1998)
  • Rudolf Kompfner, engineer and physicist
  • Cornelius Lanczos, mathematical physicist
  • Rolf Landauer, physicist, information theory
  • Leon M. Lederman, physicist, Nobel Prize (1988)
  • David Morris Lee, superfluidity, Nobel Prize (1996)
  • Fritz London, quantum chemistry
  • Theodore Maiman, first operable laser
  • Albert Michelson, speed of light, Nobel Prize (1907)
  • Ben Roy Mottelson, physicist, Nobel Prize (1975)
  • Frank Oppenheimer, nuclear physicist (brother of Robert)
  • Robert Oppenheimer, nuclear physicist (brother of Frank)
  • Douglas D. Osheroff, superfluidity, Nobel Prize (1996)
  • Jeremiah P. Ostriker, astrophysicist
  • Abraham Pais, historian of science
  • Wolfgang Pauli, nuclear physicist, Nobel Prize (1945) (Jewish father, half-Jewish mother) (naturalized citizen)
  • Arno Allan Penzias, background radiation, Nobel Prize (1978)
  • Martin Lewis Perl, physicist, Nobel Prize (1995)
  • H. David Politzer, physicist, Nobel Prize (2004)
  • Martin Pope, physical chemist, Davy Medal (2006)
  • Isidor Isaac Rabi, physicist, Nobel Prize (1944) (naturalized citizen)
  • Simon Ramo, physicist, engineer
  • Mark G. Raizen, physicist, quantum physics
  • Sidney Redner, statistical physics
  • Frederick Reines, neutrino experiment, Nobel Prize (1995)
  • Burton Richter, physicist, Nobel Prize (1976)
  • Carl Sagan, astronomer & science popularizer
  • Arthur Schawlow, laser spectroscopy, Nobel Prize (1981) (Jewish father)
  • Melvin Schwartz, physicist, Nobel Prize (1988)
  • Julian Schwinger, quantum physicist, Nobel Prize (1965)
  • Emilio G. Segrè, anti-proton, Nobel Prize (1959) (naturalized citizen)
  • Lee Smolin, loop quantum gravity
  • Alan Sokal, Sokal Affair
  • H. Eugene Stanley, econophysics, phase transitions, critical phenomena
  • Jack Steinberger, physicist, Nobel Prize (1988)
  • Otto Stern, physicist, Nobel Prize (1943)
  • Andrew Strominger, string theory
  • Leonard Susskind, string theory (Jewish father)
  • Leó Szilárd, nuclear physicist (naturalized citizen)
  • Edward Teller, nuclear physicist
  • Steven Weinberg, electroweak force, Nobel Prize (1979)
  • Victor Frederick Weisskopf (1908–2002) physicist. During World War II, he worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, and later campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons
  • Eugene Wigner, quantum physicist, Nobel Prize (1963)
  • Edward Witten, mathematical physicist, Fields Medal (1990), founder of M-Theory, only physicist to win Fields medal, and currently the driving force behind theoretical/mathematical physics.
  • George Zweig, quarks

Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, jewish, american and/or physicists:

    “Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
    —Janet Frame (b. 1924)

    “Lastly, his tomb
    Shall list and founder in the troughs of grass
    And none shall speak his name.”
    —Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)

    “I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.”
    —Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)

    “European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition—of intellectual activity, of letters—and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.”
    —James Baldwin (1924–1987)

    “It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms.”
    —George Wald (b. 1906)