List of theoretical physicists

The following is a partial list of theoretical physicists:

Ancient Times

* Pythagoras^* (circa 569–475 BCE)
* Democritus° (circa 460 BCE)
* Archimedesº* (287–212 BCE)

15–16th century

* Nicolaus Copernicusº (1473-1543)

16–17th century

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

17–18th century

* Blaise Pascal^ (1623 - 1662)
* Isaac Newton^*º (1642-1727)
* Gottfried Leibniz^ (1646–1716)

18–19th century

* Leonhard Euler^ (1707–1783)
* Joseph Lagrange^º (1736-1813)
* Joseph Fourier^ (1768–1830)
* Thomas Young‡* (1773–1829)

19th century

* William Hamilton^º (1805-1865)
* Hermann von Helmholtz‡† (1821–1894)
* James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)
* Ernst Mach (1838–1916)
* J. Willard Gibbs†^ (1839–1903)
* Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906)
* Heinrich Hertz* (1857-1894)

19–20th century

* 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 Einstein (1879-1955)
* Paul (1880–1933) & Tatyana (1876–1964) Ehrenfest
* Richard Tolman° (1881-1948)
* Arthur Eddington° (1882-1944)
* Emmy Noether^ (1882–1935)

20th century

* Albert Einsteinº (1879-1955)
* Max Born (1882-1970)
* Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
* Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961)
* Louis de Broglie (1892–1987)
* Satyendra Bose (1894–1974)
* Leo Szilard (1898–1964)
* Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958)
* Enrico Fermi* (1901-1954)
* Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)
* Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
* Robert Oppenheimer* (1904–1967)
* George Gamow‡° (1904–1968)
* Ettore Majorana (1906-1938)
* Hans Bethe° (1906–2005)
* Lev Landau (1908–1968)
* John Bardeen (1908-1991)
* José Enrique Moyal (1910-1998)
* Robert Dicke (1916-1997)
* David Bohm (1917-1992)
* Richard Feynman (1918-1988)
* Abdus Salam (1926-1996)
* Dennis Sciama (1926-1999)
* Revaz Dogonadze (1931-1985)

20–21st century

* John Wheeler (1911-2008)
* Peter Westervelt (1919-)
* Yoichiro Nambu (1921–)
* Chen Ning Yang (1922–)
* Martin Gutzwiller (1925-)
* Peter Higgs (1929-)
* Roger Penrose^ (1931-)
* Sheldon Glashow (1932-)
* Steven Weinberg (1933-)
* Martinus Veltman (1937-)
* Kip Thorneº (1940-)
* Leonard Susskind (1940-)
* Francisco Jose Yndurain Muñoz (1940-2008)
* David Gross (1941-)
* Stephen Hawkingº (1942-)
* Fulvio Melia (1956 - )
* Sylvester James Gates
* V. Balakrishnan (1943-)
* Gerardus 't Hooft (1946-)
* A. P. Balachandran
* Michio Kaku (1947–)
* Stanley Mandelstam
* Charles Thorn
* Edward Witten^ (1951-)
* David Deutsch (1953-)
* Joseph Polchinski (1954-)
* Ashoke Sen (1956-)
* Cumrun Vafa (1960-)
* Michael R. Douglas (1961-)
* Brian Greene (1963-)
* João Magueijo (1967-)
* Juan Maldacena (1968-)
* Leon Cooper (1930-)
* Leo Kadanoff
* Tom Kibble
* Harold Puthoff
* Sankar Das Sarma
* Alexei Smirnov
* Stanislav Mikheyev
* Murray Gell-Mann (1929-)
* José W. F. Valle (1953-)
* Lisa Randall (1962-)
* Pierre Ramond (1943-)
* Kyriakos Tamvakis

Theoretical physicists in pop culture

* Samantha Carter
* Sheldon Cooper
* Larry Fleinhardt
* Gordon Freeman
* Isaac Kleiner
* Rodney McKay
* Eli Vance
* Leonardo Vetra

Notes

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

See also

* Genealogy of theoretical physicists
* List of scientists
* List of physicists