physicist

/ˈfɪzɪsɪst/

/ˈfɪzəsɪst/

Other forms: physicists

A physicist is a scientist who studies and is trained in physics, which is the study of nature, especially how matter and energy behave.

Do you ever wonder how things work? If you're interested in what makes magnets attract iron or what's happening in atoms, then maybe you should become a physicist. Physicists study physics, which is related to the word physical. Physicists are interested in everything that physically exists, from tiny gadgets to massive stars. It takes many years of school to become a physicist, and physicists work on complex projects such as space travel and new energy sources.

Definitions of physicist

1. noun

   a scientist trained in physics
   examples:

   Al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham

   an Egyptian polymath (born in Iraq) whose research in geometry and optics was influential into the 17th century; established experiments as the norm of proof in physics (died in 1040)

   Philip Warren Anderson

   United States physicist who studied the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems (1923-)

   Sir Edward Victor Appleton

   English physicist remembered for his studies of the ionosphere (1892-1966)

   Archimedes

   Greek mathematician and physicist noted for his work in hydrostatics and mechanics and geometry (287-212 BC)

   Svante August Arrhenius

   Swedish chemist and physicist noted for his theory of chemical dissociation (1859-1927)

   Amedeo Avogadro

   Italian physicist noted for his work on gases; proposed what has come to be called Avogadro's law (1776-1856)

   John Bardeen

   United States physicist who won the Nobel prize for physics twice (1908-1991)

   Antoine Henri Becquerel

   French physicist who discovered that rays emitted by uranium salts affect photographic plates (1852-1908)

   Daniel Bernoulli

   Swiss physicist who contributed to hydrodynamics and mathematical physics (1700-1782)

   Ludwig Boltzmann

   Austrian physicist who contributed to the kinetic theory of gases (1844-1906)

   Bertram Brockhouse

   Canadian physicist who bounced neutron beams off of atomic nuclei to study the structure of matter (1918-2003)

   Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot

   French physicist who founded thermodynamics (1796-1832)

   Henry Cavendish

   British chemist and physicist who established that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen and who calculated the density of the earth (1731-1810)

   Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles

   French physicist and author of Charles's law which anticipated Gay-Lussac's law (1746-1823)

   Charles Augustin de Coulomb

   French physicist famous for his discoveries in the field of electricity and magnetism; formulated Coulomb's Law (1736-1806)

   Sir William Crookes

   English chemist and physicist; discovered thallium; invented the radiometer and studied cathode rays (1832-1919)

   Pierre Curie

   French physicist; husband of Marie Curie (1859-1906)

   John Dalton

   English chemist and physicist who formulated atomic theory and the law of partial pressures; gave the first description of red-green color blindness (1766-1844)

   Sir James Dewar

   Scottish chemist and physicist noted for his work in cryogenics and his invention of the Dewar flask (1842-1923)

   Christian Johann Doppler

   Austrian physicist famous for his discovery of the Doppler effect (1803-1853)

   Albert Einstein

   physicist born in Germany who formulated the special theory of relativity and the general theory of relativity; Einstein also proposed that light consists of discrete quantized bundles of energy (later called photons) (1879-1955)

   Leo Esaki

   physicist honored for advances in solid state electronics (born in Japan in 1925)

   Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit

   German physicist who invented the mercury thermometer and developed the scale of temperature that bears his name (1686-1736)

   Michael Faraday

   the English physicist and chemist who discovered electromagnetic induction (1791-1867)

   Gustav Theodor Fechner

   German physicist who founded psychophysics; derived Fechner's law on the basis of early work by E. H. Weber (1801-1887)

   Jean Bernard Leon Foucault

   French physicist who determined the speed of light and showed that it travels slower in water than in air; invented the Foucault pendulum and the gyroscope (1819-1868)

   Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier

   French mathematician who developed Fourier analysis and studied the conduction of heat (1768-1830)

   James Franck

   United States physicist (born in Germany) who with Gustav Hertz performed an electron scattering experiment that proved the existence of the stationary energy states postulated by Niels Bohr (1882-1964)

   Augustin Jean Fresnel

   French physicist who invented polarized light and invented the Fresnel lens (1788-1827)

   Emil Klaus Julius Fuchs

   British physicist who was born in Germany and fled Nazi persecution; in the 1940s he passed secret information to the USSR about the development of the atom bomb in the United States (1911-1988)

   Dennis Gabor

   British physicist (born in Hungary) noted for his work on holography (1900-1979)

   George Gamow

   United States physicist (born in Russia) who was a proponent of the big-bang theory and who did research in radioactivity and suggested the triplet code for DNA (1904-1968)

   Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

   French chemist and physicist who first isolated boron and who formulated the law describing the behavior of gases under constant pressure (1778-1850)

   Hans Geiger

   German physicist who developed the Geiger counter (1882-1945)

   William Gilbert

   English court physician noted for his studies of terrestrial magnetism (1540-1603)

   Robert Hutchings Goddard

   United States physicist who developed the first successful liquid-fueled rocket (1882-1945)

   Stephen William Hawking

   English theoretical physicist (born in 1942)

   Oliver Heaviside

   English physicist and electrical engineer who helped develop telegraphic and telephonic communications; in 1902 (independent of A. E. Kennelly) he suggested the existence of an atmospheric layer that reflects radio waves back to earth (1850-1925)

   Baron Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz

   German physiologist and physicist (1821-1894)

   Joseph Henry

   United States physicist who studied electromagnetic phenomena (1791-1878)

   Heinrich Rudolph Hertz

   German physicist who was the first to produce electromagnetic waves artificially (1857-1894)

   Victor Franz Hess

   United States physicist (born in Austria) who was a discoverer of cosmic radiation (1883-1964)

   Christiaan Huygens

   Dutch physicist who first formulated the wave theory of light (1629-1695)

   Jean-Frederic Joliot-Curie

   French nuclear physicist who was Marie Curie's assistant and who worked with Marie Curie's daughter who he married (taking the name Joliot-Curie); he and his wife discovered how to synthesize new radioactive elements (1900-1958)

   Irene Joliot-Curie

   French physicist who (with her husband) synthesized new chemical elements (1897-1956)

   James Prescott Joule

   English physicist who established the mechanical theory of heat and discovered the first law of thermodynamics (1818-1889)

   Alfred Kastler

   French physicist (1902-1984)

   First Baron Kelvin

   British physicist who invented the Kelvin scale of temperature and pioneered undersea telegraphy (1824-1907)

   Gustav Robert Kirchhoff

   German physicist who with Bunsen pioneered spectrum analysis and formulated two laws governing electric networks (1824-1887)

   Lev Davidovich Landau

   Soviet physicist who worked on low temperature physics (1908-1968)

   Philipp Lenard

   German physicist who studied cathode rays (1862-1947)

   Gabriel Lippmann

   French physicist who developed the first color photographic process (1845-1921)

   Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge

   English physicist who studied electromagnetic radiation and was a pioneer of radiotelegraphy (1851-1940)

   Hendrik Antoon Lorentz

   Dutch physicist noted for work on electromagnetic theory (1853-1928)

   Ernst Mach

   Austrian physicist and philosopher who introduced the Mach number and who founded logical positivism (1838-1916)

   James Clerk Maxwell

   Scottish physicist whose equations unified electricity and magnetism and who recognized the electromagnetic nature of light (1831-1879)

   Fritz W. Meissner

   German physicist (1882-1974)

   Albert Abraham Michelson

   United States physicist (born in Germany) who collaborated with Morley in the Michelson-Morley experiment (1852-1931)

   Robert Andrews Millikan

   United States physicist who isolated the electron and measured its charge (1868-1953)

   Louis Eugene Felix Neel

   French physicist noted for research on magnetism (born in 1904)

   Walther Hermann Nernst

   German physicist and chemist who formulated the third law of thermodynamics (1864-1941)

   Sir Isaac Newton

   English mathematician and physicist; remembered for developing the calculus and for his law of gravitation and his three laws of motion (1642-1727)

   Hans Christian Oersted

   Danish physicist (1777-1851)

   Georg Simon Ohm

   German physicist who formulated Ohm's law (1787-1854)

   Henri Pitot

   French physicist for whom the Pitot tube was named (1695-1771)

   Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

   German physicist whose explanation of blackbody radiation in the context of quantized energy emissions initiated quantum theory (1858-1947)

   Cecil Frank Powell

   English physicist who discovered the pion (the first known meson) which is a subatomic particle involved in holding the nucleus together (1903-1969)

   Aleksandr Mikjailovich Prokhorov

   Russian physicist whose research into ways of moving electrons around atoms led to the development of masers and lasers for producing high-intensity radiation (1916-2002)

   Third Baron Rayleigh

   English physicist who studied the density of gases and discovered argon; made important contributions to acoustic theory (1842-1919)

   Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur

   French physicist who invented the alcohol thermometer (1683-1757)

   Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen

   German physicist who discovered x-rays and developed roentgenography (1845-1923)

   First Baron Rutherford of Nelson

   British physicist (born in New Zealand) who discovered the atomic nucleus and proposed a nuclear model of the atom (1871-1937)

   William Bradford Shockley

   United States physicist (born in England) who contributed to the development of the electronic transistor (1910-1989)

   Benjamin Thompson

   English physicist (born in America) who studied heat and friction; experiments convinced him that heat is caused by moving particles (1753-1814)

   Sir Joseph John Thomson

   English physicist who experimented with the conduction of electricity through gases and who discovered the electron and determined its charge and mass (1856-1940)

   Sir George Paget Thomson

   English physicist (son of Joseph John Thomson) who was a co-discoverer of the diffraction of electrons by crystals (1892-1975)

   Evangelista Torricelli

   Italian physicist who invented the mercury barometer (1608-1647)

   John Tyndall

   British physicist (born in Ireland) remembered for his experiments on the transparency of gases and the absorption of radiant heat by gases and the transmission of sound through the atmosphere; he was the first person to explain why the daylight sky is blue (1820-1893)

   James Alfred Van Allen

   United States physicist who discovered two belts of charged particles from the solar wind trapped by the Earth's magnetic field (born in 1914)

   Robert Jemison Van de Graaff

   United States physicist (1901-1967)

   Johannes Diderik van der Waals

   Dutch physicist (1837-1923)

   John Hasbrouck Van Vleck

   United States physicist (1899-1980)

   Conte Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta

   Italian physicist after whom the volt is named; studied electric currents and invented the voltaic pile (1745-1827)

   Wilhelm Eduard Weber

   German physicist and brother of E. H. Weber; noted for his studies of terrestrial magnetism (1804-1891)

   Steven Weinberg

   United States theoretical physicist (born in 1933)

   Sir Charles Wheatstone

   English physicist and inventor who devised the Wheatstone bridge (1802-1875)

   Robert Woodrow Wilson

   United States physicist honored for his work on cosmic microwave radiation (born in 1918)

   William Hyde Wollaston

   English chemist and physicist who discovered palladium and rhodium and demonstrated that static and current electricity are the same (1766-1828)

   Yang Chen Ning

   United States physicist (born in China) who collaborated with Tsung Dao Lee in disproving the principle of conservation of parity (born in 1922)

   Thomas Young

   British physicist and Egyptologist; he revived the wave theory of light and proposed a three-component theory of color vision; he also played an important role in deciphering the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone (1773-1829)

   Pieter Zeeman

   Dutch physicist honored for his research on the influence of magnetism on radiation which showed that light is radiated by the motion of charged particles in an atom (1865-1943)

   Vladimir Kosma Zworykin

   United States physicist who invented the iconoscope (1889-1982)

   types:

   acoustician

   a physicist who specializes in acoustics

   astronomer, stargazer, uranologist

   a physicist who studies astronomy

   biophysicist

   a physicist who applies the methods of physics to biology

   nuclear physicist

   a physicist who specializes in nuclear physics

   Charles Hard Townes, Charles Townes, Townes

   United States physicist who developed the laser and maser principles for producing high-intensity radiation (1915-)

   astrophysicist

   an astronomer who studies the physical properties of celestial bodies

   cosmologist

   an astronomer who studies the evolution and space-time relations of the universe

   type of:

   scientist

   a person with advanced knowledge of one or more sciences