swap_horiz Ralph Alpher Alternatives

1

Julian Schwinger

Julian Schwinger was an American physicist who helped formulate quantum electrodynamics and shared the 1965 Nobel Prize...

American Theory Quantum Nobel

9.4 Excellent

2

Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot

Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot was a French physicist whose 1824 analysis of ideal heat engines founded thermodynamics and...

Classical French Theory Thermodynamics

9.3 Excellent

3

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was a British physicist who formulated the absolute temperature scale in 1848 and helped f...

Classical Theory Victorian Thermodynamics

9.3 Excellent

4

Philip W. Anderson

Philip W. Anderson was an American physicist known for Anderson localization and broken symmetry, sharing the 1977 Nobel...

American Localization Theory Nobel

9.2 Excellent

5

John Archibald Wheeler

John Archibald Wheeler was an American physicist who advanced nuclear fission, general relativity, and popularized the t...

Modern American Theory Gravity

9.1 Excellent

6

John Bell

John Bell was a Northern Irish physicist whose 1964 theorem gave an experimental test separating quantum mechanics from...

Modern Theory Quantum Irish

9.1 Excellent

7

William Fowler

William Fowler was an American nuclear astrophysicist who shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining element...

American Experimental Astrophysics Nuclear

8.9 Great

8

Gustav Kirchhoff

Gustav Kirchhoff was a German physicist who formulated circuit laws in 1845 and, with Robert Bunsen, founded spectroscop...

German Classical Theory Spectroscopy

8.8 Great

9

Vitaly Ginzburg

Vitaly Ginzburg was a Russian physicist who developed Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity and shared the 2003 No...

Russian Theory Superconductivity Nobel

8.8 Great

10

David Bohm

David Bohm was an American theoretical physicist known for the 1952 pilot-wave interpretation of quantum mechanics and t...

Modern American Theory Quantum

8.8 Great

11

Charles H. Townes

Charles H. Townes was an American physicist who built the first maser in 1953 and shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for maser...

American Experimental Laser Nobel

8.7 Great

12

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was a French physicist who applied order-parameter ideas to soft matter and won the 1991 Nobel P...

French Theory Polymers Nobel

8.7 Great

13

Andrew Strominger

Andrew Strominger is an American theoretical physicist known for black hole entropy, string theory, and work on asymptot...

Modern American Theory Gravity

8.7 Great

14

Leon Cooper

Leon Cooper is an American physicist who identified Cooper pairs in 1956 and shared the 1972 Nobel Prize for BCS superco...

American Theory Superconductivity Nobel

8.6 Great

15

Eugene Parker

Eugene Parker was an American astrophysicist who predicted the solar wind in 1958 and gave his name to NASA's Parker Sol...

Modern American Theory Space

8.6 Great

16

Hugh Everett III

Hugh Everett III was an American physicist who proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics in his 1957...

Modern American Theory Quantum

8.4 Great

17

George Zweig

George Zweig is an American physicist who independently proposed quarks, which he called aces, in 1964 while working at...

Modern American Theory Quarks

8.2 Great

18

Bryce DeWitt

Bryce DeWitt was an American theoretical physicist known for quantum gravity and the Wheeler-DeWitt equation formulated...

Modern American Relativity Theory

8.1 Great

19

Sean Carroll

Sean Carroll is an American theoretical physicist and author known for work on cosmology, dark energy, and public explan...

Modern American Cosmology Theory

7.6 Good

20

Lee Smolin

Lee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist known for loop quantum gravity and for proposing cosmological natural se...

Modern American Theory Loop

7.6 Good