Michael Faraday received little formal education, but went on to become one of the most influential experimental physicists of the nineteenth century. His studies of electricity and magnetism laid the foundation for the scientific understanding of the principle of electromagnetic induction as well as the relationship between chemistry and electromagnetism, also known as electrochemistry. Basic …
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell is a Scottish theoretical physicist who is best known for formulating what became known as Maxwell’s equations, the series of equations that codifies the relationships between electricity and magnetism within electromagnetism. Basic Information Birthdate: June 13, 1831 Birth location: Edinburgh, Scotland Date of death: November 5, 1879 Early Life, Education, & …
1995 Nobel Prize In Physics
The 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded “for pioneering contributions to lepton physics,” with the award split jointly and evenly between Martin L. Perl “for the discovery of the tau lepton” and Frederick Reines “for the detection of the neutrino.” The Science: Leptons Throughout the twentieth centuries, physicists discovered much about the fundamental particles …
1994 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded “for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter.” The award was split jointly between Bertram N. Brockhouse “for the development of neutron spectroscopy” and Clifford G. Shull “for the development of the neutron diffraction technique.” The Science: Neutron Scattering Creating …
Film Review: The Theory of Everything
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking is one of the most intriguing figures of the twentieth century, not only for his deep and impressive contributions to theoretical physics, but also for the profound personal challenges he faced in order to offer those contributions. Diagnosed with the debilitating neurological disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also called ALS or Lou Gehrig’s …
1993 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., “for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation.” The Science: Pulsars and Gravitation In 1974, the two winners of the 1993 Nobel Prize …
1992 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 1992 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Georges Charpak “for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiware proportion chamber.” The Science: Particle Detectors As physics progressed to more refined level of experimental analysis, particle accelerators and the detectors connected to them needed to look for ever more rare particle …
1991 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 1991 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Pierre-Gilles de Gennes “for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers.” The Science: Order in Matter The physical structure of molecules and molecule chains within physical …
Brownian Motion
Brownian motion is the seemingly random motion undergone by particles suspended in a liquid or gas. The name comes from the fact that it was observed by Scottish botanist Robert Brown in 1827. While observing pollen grains in water under a microscope, Brown observed the motion of the particle through the liquid. For decades, the …
SLAC Linear Accelerator Center
The SLAC Linear Accelerator Center is one of the most prominent particle accelerators in the United States of America. It is a key research facility in the field of particle physics, with research from throughout the latter half of the twentieth century that has been recognized multiple times with awards such as the Nobel Prize …