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List Of Theoretical Physicists
The following is a partial list of notable theoretical physicists. Arranged by century of birth, then century of death, then year of birth, then year of death, then alphabetically by surname. For explanation of symbols, see Notes at end of this article. Ancient times * Thales (c. 624 – c. 546 BCE) * Pythagoras^* (c. 570 – c. 495 BCE) * Democritus° (c. 460 – c. 370 BCE) * Aristotle‡ (384–322 BCE) * Archimedesº* (c. 287 – c. 212 BCE) * Hypatia^ªº (c. 350–370; died 415 AD) Middle Ages * Al Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) * Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965 – c. 1040) * Al Beruni (c. 973 – c. 1048) * Omar Khayyám (c. 1048 – c. 1131) * Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274) * Jean Buridan (1301 – c. 1359/62) * Nicole Oresme (c. 1320 – 1325 –1382) * Sigismondo Polcastro (1384–1473) 15th–16th century * Nicolaus Copernicusº (1473–1543) 16th century and 16th–17th centuries * Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) * Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) * Giordano Bruno (1548–160 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theoretical Physicists
The following is a partial list of notable theoretical physicists. Arranged by century of birth, then century of death, then year of birth, then year of death, then alphabetically by surname. For explanation of symbols, see Notes at end of this article. Ancient times * Thales (c. 624 – c. 546 BCE) * Pythagoras^* (c. 570 – c. 495 BCE) * Democritus° (c. 460 – c. 370 BCE) * Aristotle‡ (384–322 BCE) * Archimedesº* (c. 287 – c. 212 BCE) * Hypatia^ªº (c. 350–370; died 415 AD) Middle Ages * Al Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) * Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965 – c. 1040) * Al Beruni (c. 973 – c. 1048) * Omar Khayyám (c. 1048 – c. 1131) * Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274) * Jean Buridan (1301 – c. 1359/62) * Nicole Oresme (c. 1320 – 1325 –1382) * Sigismondo Polcastro (1384–1473) 15th–16th century * Nicolaus Copernicusº (1473–1543) 16th century and 16th–17th centuries * Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) * Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) * Giordano Bruno (1548– ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. In all likelihood, Copernicus developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier. The publication of Copernicus's model in his book ' (''On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres''), just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution. Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was a mathematician, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( , , ; ; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest mathematical work was on conic sections; he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16. He later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines), establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Like his contemporary René Descartes, Pascal was also a pioneer in the natural and applied sciences. Pascal wrote in defense of the scientific method and produced several controversial results. He made important contributions to the study of fluids, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francesco Maria Grimaldi
Francesco Maria Grimaldi, SJ (2 April 1618 – 28 December 1663) was an Italian Jesuit priest, mathematician and physicist who taught at the Jesuit college in Bologna. He was born in Bologna to Paride Grimaldi and Anna Cattani. Work Between 1640 and 1650, working with Riccioli, he investigated the free fall of objects, confirming that the distance of fall was proportional to the square of the time taken. Grimaldi and Riccioli also made a calculation of gravity at the earth's surface by recording the oscillations of an accurate pendulum. In astronomy, he built and used instruments to measure lunar mountains as well as the height of clouds, and drew an accurate map or, ''selenograph'', which was published by Riccioli and now adorns the entrance to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. He was the first to make accurate observations on the diffraction of light (although by some accounts Leonardo da Vinci had earlier noted it), and coined the word 'diffraction' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (; 28 January 1608 – 31 December 1679) was a Renaissance Italian physiologist, physicist, and mathematician. He contributed to the modern principle of scientific investigation by continuing Galileo's practice of testing hypotheses against observation. Trained in mathematics, Borelli also made extensive studies of Jupiter's moons, the mechanics of animal locomotion and, in microscopy, of the constituents of blood. He also used microscopy to investigate the stomatal movement of plants, and undertook studies in medicine and geology. During his career, he enjoyed the patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden. Biography Giovanni Borelli was born on 28 January 1608 in the district of Castel Nuovo, in Naples. He was the son of Spanish infantryman Miguel Alonso and a local woman named Laura Porello (alternately ''Porelli'' or ''Borelli''.) Borelli eventually traveled to Rome where he studied under Benedetto Castelli, matriculating in mathematics at Sapienza Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evangelista Torricelli
Evangelista Torricelli ( , also , ; 15 October 160825 October 1647) was an Italian physicist and mathematician, and a student of Galileo. He is best known for his invention of the barometer, but is also known for his advances in optics and work on the method of indivisibles. The Torr is also named after him. Biography Early life Torricelli was born on 15 October 1608 in Rome, the firstborn child of Gaspare Torricelli and Caterina Angetti. His family was from Faenza in the Province of Ravenna, then part of the Papal States. His father was a textile worker and the family was very poor. Seeing his talents, his parents sent him to be educated in Faenza, under the care of his uncle, Giacomo (James), a Camaldolese monk, who first ensured that his nephew was given a sound basic education. He then entered young Torricelli into a Jesuit College in 1624, possibly the one in Faenza itself, to study mathematics and philosophy until 1626, by which time his father, Gaspare, had died. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre De Fermat
Pierre de Fermat (; between 31 October and 6 December 1607 – 12 January 1665) was a French mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of differential calculus, then unknown, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for his Fermat's principle for light propagation and his Fermat's Last Theorem in number theory, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' '' Arithmetica''. He was also a lawyer at the '' Parlement'' of Toulouse, France. Biography Fermat was born in 1607 in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France—the late 15th-century mansion where Fermat was born is now a museum. He was from Gascony, where his father, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bonaventura Cavalieri
Bonaventura Francesco Cavalieri ( la, Bonaventura Cavalerius; 1598 – 30 November 1647) was an Italian mathematician and a Jesuate. He is known for his work on the problems of optics and motion, work on indivisibles, the precursors of infinitesimal calculus, and the introduction of logarithms to Italy. Cavalieri's principle in geometry partially anticipated integral calculus. Life Born in Milan, Cavalieri joined the Jesuates order (not to be confused with the Jesuits) at the age of fifteen, taking the name Bonaventura upon becoming a novice of the order, and remained a member until his death. He took his vows as a full member of the order in 1615, at the age of seventeen, and shortly after joined the Jesuat house in Pisa. By 1616 he was a student of geometry at the University of Pisa. There he came under the tutelage of Benedetto Castelli, who probably introduced him to Galileo Galilei. In 1617 he briefly joined the Medici court in Florence, under the patronage of Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes considered himself a devout Catholic. Many elements of Descartes' philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the schools on two major points: first, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benedetto Castelli
Benedetto Castelli (1578 – 9 April 1643), born Antonio Castelli, was an Italian mathematician. Benedetto was his name in religion on entering the Benedictine Order in 1595. Life Born in Brescia, Castelli studied at the University of Padua and later became an abbot at the Benedictine monastery in Monte Cassino. He was a long-time friend and supporter of his teacher, Galileo Galilei, and in turn teacher to Galileo's son. He assisted Galileo's study of sunspots and participated in the examination of the theories of Nicolaus Copernicus. Castelli was interested in mathematics and hydraulics. He was appointed as a mathematician to the University of Pisa, replacing Galileo, and later at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Castelli introduced Bonaventura Cavalieri to Galileo, leading to an extensive correspondence between the latter; Galileo was instrumental in procuring a position for Cavalieri at the University of Bologna in 1629. Castelli was involved in the discovery of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books '' Astronomia nova'', '' Harmonice Mundi'', and '' Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae''. These works also provided one of the foundations for Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting (or Keplerian) telescop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science. Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and " hydrostatic balances". He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, observation of Saturn's rin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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