Klaus von Klitzing is a Nobel laureate who won the award in 1985 for his discovery of the quantized Hall effect, sometimes referred to as the quantum Hall effect. Von Klitzing's discovery resulted from his work exploring a phenomenon...

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch physicist who first observed the phenomenon of superconductivity while carrying out pioneering work in the field of cryogenics. An important step on the way to this discovery was his success in...

Have you ever wondered who discovered the electron? The answer is Nobel Prize winning physicist Sir Joseph John Thomson.

Physicist Felix Bloch developed a non-destructive technique for precisely observing and measuring the magnetic properties of nuclear particles. He called his technique "nuclear induction," but nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) soon became...

Chemist Paul Lauterbur pioneered the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for medical imaging. He developed a technique, now known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in the early 1970s that involves the introduction of gradients in...

Georg Simon Ohm had humble roots and struggled financially throughout most of his life, but the German physicist is well known today for his formulation of a law, termed Ohm's law, describing the mathematical relationship between...

In their search for new superconductors, Swiss theoretical physicist Karl Alexander Muller and his young colleague, J. Georg Bednorz, abandoned the metal alloys typically used in superconductivity research in favor of a class of oxides...

Gerd Binnig co-developed the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) with Heinrich Rohrer. The STM allowed scientists entry into the atomic world in a new way and was a major advance in the field of nanotechnology. For their achievement,...

J. Georg Bednorz jointly revolutionized superconductivity research with K. Alex Muller by discovering an entirely new class of superconductors, often referred to as high-temperature superconductors. They managed to achieve...

Joseph Henry was an American scientist who pioneered the construction of strong, practical electromagnets and built one of the first electromagnetic motors. During his experiments with electromagnetism, Henry discovered the property of...

The integrated circuit fueled the rise of microelectronics in the latter half of the twentieth century and paved the way for the Information Age. An American engineer, Jack Kilby, invented the integrated circuit in 1958, shortly after he...

James Prescott Joule experimented with engines, electricity and heat throughout his life. Joule's findings resulted in his development of the mechanical theory of heat and Joule's law, which quantitatively describes the rate at which...

Karl Jansky discovered extraterrestrial radio waves while investigating possible sources of interference in shortwave radio communications across the Atlantic for Bell Laboratories, and is often known as the father of radio astronomy....

A discovery by Hans Christian Orsted forever changed the way scientists think about electricity and magnetism. While preparing to perform an experiment during a lecture at the University of Copenhagen, he found that the magnetized needle...

James Clerk Maxwell was one of the most influential scientists of the nineteenth century. His theoretical work on electromagnetism and light largely determined the direction that physics would take in the early twentieth century. Indeed,...

In a career that lasted seven decades, Max Planck achieved an enduring legacy with groundbreaking discoveries involving the relationship between heat and energy, but he is most remembered as the founder of the "quantum theory."

This site provides a brief biography of the english physicist J.J. Thomson.

This site is a mixture of a short biography and quotes on German physicist Max Planck.

Discoverer of Radium, Marie Curie.

A portrait of Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, made available through the Smithsonian Institution's Scientific Identity Collection.

A portrait of Rene Descartes from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, made available through the Smithsonian Institution's Scientific Identity Collection.

A portrait of Kenelm Digby from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, made available through the Smithsonian Institution's Scientific Identity Collection.

A portrait of Albert Einstein from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, made available through the Smithsonian Institution's Scientific Identity Collection.

A portrait of Leonhard Euler from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, made available through the Smithsonian Institution's Scientific Identity Collection.