List of theoretical physicists

The following is a partial list of notable physics theorists, those who are recognized in theoretical physics. Arranged by century of death, then year of birth:

Ancient times

• Thales (c. 624–546 BCE)
• Pythagoras^* (c. 569–475 BCE)
• Democritus° (c. 460 BCE)
• Archimedesº* (287–212 BCE)

Middle Ages

• Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965 – c.1040)
• Al Beruni (c. 973 – c. 1048)
• Omar Khayyám (c. 1048 – c. 1131)
• Al Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950)
• Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274)

15th–16th century

• Nicolaus Copernicusº (1473–1543)

16th–17th century

• Galileo Galileiº* (1564–1642)
• Johannes Keplerº (1571–1630)
• René Descartes‡^ (1596–1650)

17th–18th century

• Blaise Pascal^ (1623–1662)
• Christiaan Huygens^ (1629–1695)
• Isaac Newton^*º (1642–1727)
• Gottfried Leibniz^ (1646–1716)

18th–19th century

• Leonhard Euler^ (1707–1783)
• Joseph Lagrange^º (1736–1813)
• Charles Coulomb (1736–1806)
• Joseph Fourier^ (1768–1830)
• Thomas Young‡* (1773–1829)
• Michael Faraday*† (1791–1867)

19th century

• William Hamilton^º (1805–1865)
• Hermann von Helmholtz‡† (1821–1894)
• James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)
• Heinrich Hertz* (1857–1894)

19th–20th century

• William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin* (1824–1907)
• Ernst Mach (1838–1916)
• J. Willard Gibbs†^ (1839–1903)
• Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906)
• Nikolay Umov (1846–1915)
• Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928)
• Henri Poincaré (1854–1912)
• Max Planck (1858–1947)
• Pieter Zeeman (1865–1943)
• Marie Curie (1867–1934)
• Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951)
• Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937)
• James Jeans° (1877–1946)
• Albert Einsteinº (1879–1955)
• Max von Laue (1879–1960)
• Paul (1880–1933) and Tatyana Ehrenfest (1876–1964)
• Richard Tolman° (1881–1948)
• Arthur Eddington (1882–1944)
• Emmy Noether (1882–1935)
• Max Born (1882–1970)
• Niels Bohr (1885–1962)
• Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961)
• Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962)
• Louis de Broglie (1892–1987)
• Georges Lemaître (1894–1966)
• Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974)
• Igor Tamm (1895–1971)
• Leó Szilárd (1898–1964)
• Ali Moustafa Mosharafa ( 1898–1950 )
• Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958)
• George Eugene Uhlenbeck (1900–1988)

20th century

• Enrico Fermi* (1901–1954)
• Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976)
• Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (1902–1978)
• Pascual Jordan (1902–1980)
• Paul Dirac (1902–1984)
• Eugene Wigner (1902–1995)
• Robert Oppenheimer* (1904–1967)
• George Gamow‡° (1904–1968)
• Felix Bloch (1905–1983)
• Ettore Majorana (1906–1938)
• Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906–1972)
• Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (1906–1979)
• J. Hans D. Jensen (1907–1973)
• Hideki Yukawa (1907–1981)
• Lev Landau (1908–1968)
• Viktor Ambartsumian (1908–1996)
• Ilya Frank (1908–1990)
• John Bardeen (1908–1991)
• Anatoly Vlasov (1908–1975)
• Nikolay Bogolyubov (1909–1992)
• José Enrique Moyal (1910–1998)
• Arsenij Sokolov (1910–1986)
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995)
• William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995)
• Robert Dicke (1916–1997)
• David Bohm (1917–1992)
• Dmitry Zubarev (1917–1992)
• Richard Feynman (1918–1988)
• Julian Schwinger (1918–1994)
• Igor Ternov (1921–1996)
• Feza Gürsey (1921–1992)
• Sergei Tyablikov (1921–1968)
• Abdus Salam (1926–1996)
• Dennis Sciama (1926–1999)
• Gurgen Askaryan (1928–1997)
• Revaz Dogonadze (1931–1985)
• Victor Popov (1937–1994)

20th–21st century

• Abdus Salam, 20th century Pakistani physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in 1979
• Fazlur Khan, 20th century Bangladeshi mechanician
• Mahmoud Hessaby, 20th century Iranian physicist
• Ali Javan, 20th century Iranian physicist
• Mehran Kardar, Iranian theoretical physicist
• Munir Nayfeh Palestinian-American particle physicist
• Abdul Qadeer Khan Pakistani metallurgist and nuclear scientist
• Riazuddin Pakistani theoretical physicist
• Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, Pakistani nuclear engineer and nuclear physicist
• Ali Musharafa Egyptian nuclear physicist
• Sameera Moussa Egyptian nuclear physicist
• Munir Ahmad Khan, Father of Pakistan's nuclear program.
• Hans Bethe° (1906–2005)
• John Wheeler (1911–2008)
• Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009)
• Peter Westervelt (1919–2015)
• Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015)
• Chen Ning Yang (born 1922)
• Behram Kurşunoğlu (1922–2003)
• Philip Warren Anderson (born 1923)
• Freeman Dyson (born 1923)
• Bruno Zumino (1923–2014)
• Roy J. Glauber (born 1925)
• Martin Gutzwiller (1925–2014)
• Tsung-Dao Lee (born 1926)
• Erdal İnönü (1926–2007)
• Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov (born 1928)
• Robert Brout (1928–2011)
• Richard Arnowitt (1928–2014)
• Stanley Mandelstam (born 1928)
• Ezra T. Newman (born 1928)
• Reinhard Oehme (1928–2010)
• Dmitry Shirkov (born 1928)
• Murray Gell-Mann (born 1929)
• Peter Higgs (born 1929)
• Friedwardt Winterberg (born 1929)
• Leon Cooper (born 1930)
• Stanley Deser (born 1931)
• George Sudarshan (born 1931)
• Roger Penrose (born 1931)
• Valery Pokrovsky (born 1931)
• John Robert Schrieffer (born 1931)
• François Englert (born 1932)
• Sheldon Glashow (born 1932)
• Jeffrey Goldstone (born 1933)
• Tom Kibble (born 1933)
• Steven Weinberg (born 1933)
• Ludvig Faddeev (born 1934)
• John G. Cramer (born 1934)
• Julius Wess (1934–2007)
• Jacques Villain (born 1934)
• Nicola Cabibbo (1935–2010)
• Peter Freund (born 1936)
• Gerald Guralnik (born 1936)
• Harold Puthoff (born 1936)
• Kenneth G. Wilson (born 1936)
• C. R. Hagen (born 1937)
• Leo Kadanoff (born 1937)
• Martinus Veltman (born 1937)
• A. P. Balachandran (born 1938)
• Anthony James Leggett (born 1938)
• Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (born 1938)
• Daniel Z. Freedman (born 1939)
• Ratko Janev (born 1939)
• Pran Nath (born 1939)
• John Iliopoulos (born 1940)
• Brian David Josephson (born 1940)
• Toshihide Maskawa (born 1940)
• Stanislav Mikheyev (born 1940)
• Leonard Susskind (born 1940)
• Kip Thorne (born 1940)
• Francisco Jose Yndurain Muñoz (1940–2008)
• David Gross (born 1941)
• Luciano Maiani (born 1941)
• Holger Bech Nielsen (born 1941)
• John Henry Schwarz (born 1941)
• Stephen Hawking° (born 1942)
• V. Balakrishnan (born 1943)
• Paul Frampton (born 1943)
• Richard H. Price (born 1943)
• Pierre Ramond (born 1943)
• Kurt Binder (born 1944)
• Makoto Kobayashi (born 1944)
• Sergio Ferrara (born 1945)
• Michael Green (born 1946)
• Gerardus 't Hooft (born 1946)
• İsmail Hakkı Duru (born 1946)
• Jürg Fröhlich (born 1947)
• Howard Georgi (born 1947)
• Michio Kaku (born 1947)
• John Cardy (born 1947)
• Walter Selke (born 1947)
• Dimitri Nanopoulos (born 1948)
• Hugh David Politzer (born 1949)
• Nihat Berker (born 1949)
• Tekin Dereli (born 1949)
• Ayşe Erzan (born 1949)
• Sylvester James Gates (born 1950)
• Robert B. Laughlin (born 1950)
• Stephen Parke (born 1950)
• Goran Senjanovic (born 1950)
• Kyriakos Tamvakis (born 1950)
• Christopher T. Hill (born 1951)
• Alexei Smirnov (born 1951)
• Frank Wilczek (born 1951)
• Edward Witten (born 1951)
• Wojciech H. Zurek (born 1951)
• Paul J. Steinhardt (born 1952)
• Alexander Zamolodchikov (born 1952)
• Alexei Zamolodchikov (1952–2007)
• Ali Chamseddine (born 1953)
• Sankar Das Sarma (born 1953)
• David Deutsch (born 1953)
• José W. F. Valle (born 1953)
• Mark B. Wise (born 1953)
• Joseph Polchinski (born 1954)
• Lawrence M. Krauss (born 1954)
• Julia Yeomans (born 1954)
• Lee Smolin (born 1955)
• Fulvio Melia (born 1956)
• Viatcheslav Mukhanov (born 1956)
• Nathan Seiberg (born 1956)
• Ashoke Sen (born 1956)
• Carlo Rovelli (born 1956)
• Joseph Lykken (born 1957)
• Cumrun Vafa (born 1960)
• Xiao-Gang Wen (born 1961)
• Michael R. Douglas (born 1961)
• Gian F. Giudice (born 1961)
• Marcela Carena (born 1962)
• Igor Klebanov (born 1962)
• Lisa Randall (born 1962)
• Carlos E.M. Wagner (born 1962)
• Brian Greene (born 1963)
• Gerald B. Cleaver (born 1963)
• Alexei Kitaev (born 1963)
• Miguel Alcubierre (born 1964)
• Raman Sundrum (born 1964)
• Durmus A. Demir (born 1967)
• João Magueijo (born 1967)
• Antony Garrett Lisi (born 1968)
• Juan Maldacena (born 1968)
• Dam Thanh Son (born 1969)
• Nima Arkani-Hamed (born 1972)
• Steven Gubser (born 1972)
• Maxim Chernodub (born 1973)
• Charles Thorn

Fictional theoretical physicists

• Gordon Freeman
• Tony Stark
• Eli Vance
• Isaac Kleiner
• Rodney McKay
• Samantha Carter
• Larry Fleinhardt
• Leonardo Vetra
• Quinn Mallory
• Maximillian Arturo
• Nicholas Rush
• Daniel Faraday
• Catherine Elizabeth Halsey
• Milo Rambaldi
• Reed Richards
• Victor Von Doom
• Radek Zelenka
• Erik Lehnsherr
• Sheldon Cooper

See also

• Academic genealogy of theoretical physicists
• List of scientists
• List of physicists

Notes

 * Experimentalist also
 º Astronomer, astrophysicist or cosmologist also
 ^ Developed new mathematics
 † Contributed to chemistry
 ‡ Contributed to biology