Famous physicists. Famous nuclear physicists

By studying the laws of nature, man has been engaged for several thousand years. The lack of necessary instruments, the times of religious dictatorship, the difficult access to education for people without a significant condition - all this could not stop the progress of scientific thought. Famous physicists from different countries of the world were able to learn how to transfer information to distant distances, receive electricity and much, much more. Which names are most significant for history? Let's list some of the most outstanding specialists.

Albert Einstein

The future scientist was born in March 1879 in Ulm, Germany. The ancestors of Albert lived in Swabia for several hundred years, and he himself preserved the memory of their heritage to the very last days - spoke with a slight South German accent. He received his education in a folk school, and then in a gymnasium, where from the very beginning he preferred natural science and exact sciences. By the age of 16, he had mastered everything that was necessary for entering the university, but he could not cope with the language exam. Nevertheless, he soon became a student of the Polytechnic University in Zurich. His teachers were famous physicists and mathematicians of the time, for example, Herman Minkowski, who in the future will come up with an excellent formula for expressing the theory of relativity. Most of the time Einstein spent in the laboratory or reading the works of Maxwell, Kirchhoff and other leading experts in this field. After studying, Albert was a teacher for a while, and then became a technical expert of the patent office, during the years in which he published many of his famous works that made him famous throughout the world. He changed people's ideas about space, made a formula that turned mass into a form of energy and deeply studied molecular physics. His success was soon marked by the Nobel Prize, and the scientist himself moved to the United States, where he worked until the end of his days.

Nikola Tesla

This inventor from Austria-Hungary, perhaps, the most famous physicist in the world. Eccentric character and revolutionary discoveries made him famous and inspired several writers and directors to use his image in his work. He was born in July 1856 and from an early age, like many other well-known physicists, began to show his inclination to exact sciences. Over the years, he discovered the phenomenon of alternating current, fluorescent light and energy transfer without wires, developed remote control and a method of current treatment, created an electric clock, solar engine and many other unique devices for which he received more than three hundred patents. In addition, it is believed that the radio invented the famous physicists Popov and Marconi, but the first was still Tesla. Modern electric power industry is based entirely on his personal achievements and discoveries. One of the brightest experiments of Nikola was the transmission of a current of fifty kilometers. He managed to light two hundred electric bulbs without any wires, having built a huge tower, from which lightning flashes, and thunder was heard all around. Spectacular and risky enterprise became his trademark. By the way, in films this experience is often demonstrated.

Isaac Newton

Many famous physicists made a significant contribution, but Newton was a kind of pioneer. Its laws are the basis of many modern ideas, and at the time of their discovery it was a truly revolutionary achievement. The famous Englishman was born in 1643. Since childhood, he has been interested in physics, over the years he has written papers on mathematics, astronomy, and optics. He was the first to formulate the elementary laws of nature, than he strongly influenced the works of contemporaries. It is not surprising that Isaac Newton was admitted to the Royal Society of London, and for some time he was also its president.

Lev Landau

Like many other well-known physicists, Landau showed himself most vividly in the theoretical sphere. The legendary Soviet scientist was born in January 1908, in the family of an engineer and a doctor. He brilliantly studied at school and enrolled in Baku University, where he studied physics and chemistry. By the age of nineteen already published four scientific works. A brilliant career was devoted to the study of quantum states and density matrices, as well as electrodynamics. Landau's achievements were marked by the Nobel Prize, in addition, the Soviet scientist received several Stalin Prizes, the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, was an honorary member of the Royal Society of London and several foreign Academies of Sciences. Collaborated with Heisenberg, Pauli and Bohr. The latter influenced Landau particularly strongly - his ideas were manifested in theories about the magnetic properties of free electrons.

James Maxwell

Making up a list, which would include the world's most famous physicists, it is impossible not to mention this name. James Clerk Maxwell was a British scientist who developed classical electrodynamics. He was born in June 1831, and by 1860 he had become a member of the Royal Society of London. Maxwell created the first in the country physical laboratory with professional equipment. There he studied electromagnetism, kinetic theory of gases, optics, elasticity and other topics. He was one of the first to create a device for the quantitative measurement of colors, later called Maxwell's disc. In his theories he generalized all known facts of electrodynamics and introduced the notion of bias current, which generates a magnetic field. Maxwell expressed all the laws in four equations. Their analysis allows us to visually demonstrate the patterns that were previously unknown.

Igor Kurchatov

A well-known nuclear physicist from the USSR also deserves mention. Igor Kurchatov grew up in the Crimea, where he graduated from high school and university. From 1924 he began to work as an assistant to the Department of Physics of the Polytechnic Institute of Azerbaijan, and a year later was employed in Leningrad. For the successful study of dielectrics, he was awarded a doctorate. Under his leadership, in 1939 a cyclotron was commissioned. Igor Kurchatov conducted work on nuclear reactions and headed the Soviet atomic project. Under his leadership, the first nuclear power plant was opened. Kurchatov created the first Soviet atomic and thermonuclear bomb. For his achievements he received several state awards and medals.