John Wheeler was an eminent American theoretical physicist, perhaps best known for having initially coined the terms “black hole,” “wormhole” and several other colorful phrases. In the 1930s, he developed the important “S-matrix” in particle physics and worked with Niels Bohr to explain nuclear fission in terms of quantum physics. Later, he developed the equation […]
Karl Schwarzschild was a German physicist, best known for providing the first exact solution to Einstein’s field equations of general relativity in 1915 (the very same year that Einstein first introduced the concept of general relativity). His work generated many original concepts which now bear his name, such as Schwarzschild coordinates, the Schwarzschild metric, the […]
Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist who achieved fame for his contributions to quantum mechanics. The philosophical issues raised by his 1935 “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment perhaps remains his best-known legacy, but the Schrödinger equation, which he formulated in 1926 to describe the quantum state of a system, is his most enduring achievement at […]
Andrei Sakharov was an eminent Soviet Russian nuclear physicist, although he is perhaps better known as a dissident, human rights activist, advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Although much of his early career was spent contributing to the military might of the Soviet Union through the […]
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson was a New Zealand chemist who has become known as the “father of nuclear physics.” In 1911, he was the first to discover that atoms have a small charged nucleus surrounded by largely empty space, and are circled by tiny electrons, which became known as the Rutherford model […]
