List of theoretical physicists

The following is a partial list of notable physics theorists, those who are recognized in theoretical physics. Arranged by century of birth, then century of death, then year of birth. 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

• Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965 – c.1040)
• Al Beruni (c. 973 – c. 1048)
• Omar Khayyám (c. 1048 – c. 1131)
• Al Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950)
• Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274)
• Sigismondo Polcastro (1384–1473)

15th–16th century

• Nicolaus Copernicusº (1473–1543)

16th century and 16th–17th centuries

• Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576)
• Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)
• Galileo Galileiº* (1564–1642)
• Johannes Keplerº (1571–1630)
• Benedetto Castelli (1578–1643)
• René Descartes‡^ (1596–1650)
• Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598–1647)

17th century

• Pierre de Fermat (1607–1665)
• Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647)
• Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679)
• Blaise Pascal^ (1623–1662)
• Erhard Weigel (1625–1699)
• Christiaan Huygens^ (1629–1695)

17th–18th centuries

• Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703)
• Isaac Newton^*º (1642–1727)
• Gottfried Leibniz^ (1646–1716)
• Jacob Bernoulli (1655–1705)
• Luigi Guido Grandi (1671–1742)
• Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan (1678–1771)
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759)
• Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782)

18th century

• Leonhard Euler^ (1707–1783)
• Vincenzo Riccati (1707–1785)
• Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765)
• Laura Bassiª* (1711–1778)
• Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787)
• Alexis Clairaut (1713–1765)
• Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783)

18th–19th centuries

• Franz Aepinus (1724–1802)
• Henry Cavendish (1731–1810)
• Joseph Lagrange^º (1736–1813)
• Charles Coulomb (1736–1806)
• Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827)
• Jurij Vega (1754–1802)
• John Dalton^ (1766–1844)
• Joseph Fourier^ (1768–1830)
• Thomas Young‡* (1773–1829)
• Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862)
• André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836)
• Étienne-Louis Malus (1775–1812)
• Carl Friedrich Gauss^ (1777–1855)
• Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846)
• Claude-Louis Navier (1785–1836)
• François Arago (1786–1853)
• Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827)
• Georg Ohm (1789–1854)
• Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789–1857)
• Félix Savart (1791–1841)
• Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti (1791–1863)
• Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis (1792–1843)
• George Green^ (1793–1841)
• Gabrio Piola (1794–1850)
• Gabriel Lamé (1795–1870)
• Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832)
• Andreas von Ettingshausen (1796–1878)
• Franz Ernst Neumann (1798–1895)
• Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron (1799–1864)

19th century

• Mikhail Ostrogradsky (1801–1862)
• Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851)
• Viktor Bunyakovsky (1804–1889)
• William Hamilton^º (1805–1865)
• Joseph Liouville (1809–1882)
• Auguste Bravais (1811–1863)
• William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872)
• Hermann von Helmholtz‡† (1821–1894)
• Pafnuty Chebyshev (1821–1894)
• August Krönig (1822–1879)
• Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888)
• Gustav Kirchhoff (1824–1887)
• Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866)
• Ludvig Lorenz (1829–1891)
• James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)
• Johann Bauschinger (1834–1893)
• Josef Stefan (1835–1893)
• Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850–1891)
• Pierre Henri Hugoniot (1851–1887)
• Heinrich Hertz* (1857–1894)

19th–20th centuries

• Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet (1819–1903)
• William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin* (1824–1907)
• Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837–1923)
• Ernst Mach (1838–1916)
• Viktor von Lang (1838–1921)
• J. Willard Gibbs†^ (1839–1903)
• Ernst Abbe (1840–1905)
• Osborne Reynolds (1842–1912)
• John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (1842–1919)
• Joseph Valentin Boussinesq (1842–1929)
• Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906)
• Nikolay Umov (1846–1915)
• Horace Lamb (1849–1934)
• Woldemar Voigt (1850–1919)
• Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925)
• Jacobus Kapteyn (1851–1922)
• John Henry Poynting (1852–1914)
• Orest Khvolson (1852–1934)
• Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928)
• Henri Poincaré (1854–1912)
• Alfred Barnard Basset (1854–1930)
• Emil Cohn (1854–1944)
• Max Margules (1856–1920)
• Aleksandr Lyapunov (1857–1918)
• Joseph Larmor (1857–1942)
• Max Planck (1858–1947)
• Pierre Duhem (1861–1916)
• Emil Wiechert (1861–1928)
• Paul Drude (1863–1906)
• Arthur Gordon Webster (1863–1923)
• Vladimir Steklov (1864–1926)
• Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909)
• Pierre Weiss (1865–1940)
• Pieter Zeeman (1865–1943)
• Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951)
• Gustav Mie (1868–1957)
• Sergey Chaplygin (1869–1942)
• Alfred-Marie Liénard (1869–1958)
• Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937)
• Émile Jouguet (1871–1943)
• Boris Galerkin (1871–1945)
• Martin Knudsen (1871–1949)
• Marian Smoluchowski (1872–1917)
• Paul Langevin (1872–1946)
• Ludwik Silberstein (1872–1948)
• Théophile de Donder (1872–1957)
• E. T. Whittaker (1873–1956)
• Friedrich Hasenöhrl (1874–1915)
• Ludwig Prandtl (1875–1953)
• Tatyana Ehrenfest-Afanaseva (1876–1964)
• James Jeans° (1877–1946)
• Eduard Grüneisen (1877–1949)
• Walther Ritz (1878–1909)
• Marcel Grossmann (1878–1936)
• Stephen Timoshenko (1878–1972)
• Leonid Mandelstam (1879–1944)
• Carl Wilhelm Oseen (1879–1944)
• Albert Einsteinº (1879–1955)
• Nikolay Krylov (1879–1955)
• Max von Laue (1879–1960)
• Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933)
• Leonard Ornstein (1880–1941)
• Nikolai Dmitrievich Papaleksi (1880–1947)
• Abram Ioffe (1880–1960)
• Gunnar Nordström (1881–1923)
• Jun Ishiwara (1881–1947)
• Walter Rogowski (1881–1947)
• Richard Tolman° (1881–1948)
• Irving Langmuir (1881–1957)
• Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963)
• Erwin Madelung (1881–1972)
• Arthur Eddington (1882–1944)
• Emmy Noether^ª (1882–1935)
• Max Born (1882–1970)
• Paul Sophus Epstein (1883–1966)
• Francis Dominic Murnaghan (1883–1976)
• Ludwig Hopf (1884–1939)
• Arthur Erich Haas (1884–1941)
• George David Birkhoff (1884–1944)
• David Enskog (1884–1947)
• Peter Debye (1884–1966)
• Vsevolod Frederiks (1885–1944)
• Theodor Kaluza (1885–1954)
• Hermann Weyl (1885–1955)
• Niels Bohr (1885–1962)
• Victor Robertovich Bursian (1886–1945)
• Rudolf Seeliger (1886–1965)
• G. I. Taylor (1886–1975)
• Richard Becker (1887–1955)
• Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961)
• Charles Galton Darwin (1887–1962)
• Adriaan Fokker (1887–1972)
• Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen (1887–1974)
• Alexander Weinstein (1887–1979)
• Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff (1887–1994)
• Alexander Friedmann (1888–1925)
• Viktor Trkal (1888–1956)
• Walther Kossel (1888–1956)
• Wilhelm Lenz (1888–1957)
• Frits Zernike (1888–1966)
• Sydney Chapman (1888–1970)
• Alfred Landé (1888–1976)
• Paul Peter Ewald (1888–1985)
• Ralph H. Fowler (1889–1944)
• Léon Brillouin (1889–1969)
• Wojciech Rubinowicz (1889–1974)
• Edwin C. Kemble (1889–1984)
• Yoshio Nishina (1890–1951)
• Yurii Aleksandrovich Krutkov (1890–1952)
• Arthur March (1891–1957)
• Michael Polanyi (1891–1976)
• Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962)
• Karl Herzfeld (1892–1978)
• Louis de Broglie (1892–1987)
• Walter Gordon (1893–1939)
• Meghnad Saha (1893–1956)
• Erwin Fues (1893–1970)
• Cornelius Lanczos (1893–1974)
• Adolf Kratzer (1893–1983)
• Georges Lemaître (1894–1966)
• John Lennard-Jones (1894–1954)
• Hans Kramers (1894–1952)
• Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974)
• Yakov Frenkel (1894–1952)
• Norbert Wiener (1894–1964)
• Oskar Klein (1894–1977)
• Karel Niessen (1895–1967)
• Igor Tamm (1895–1971)
• Jan Burgers (1895–1981)
• Aldo Pontremoli (1896–1928)
• Boris Podolsky (1896–1966)
• Erich Hückel (1896–1980)
• Nikolay Semyonov (1896–1986)
• Friedrich Hund (1896–1997)
• Douglas Hartree (1897–1958)
• Ronald Wilfred Gurney (1898–1953)
• Leopold Infeld (1898–1968)
• Gregor Wentzel (1898–1978)
• Vladimir Fock (1898–1974)
• Leó Szilárd (1898–1964)
• Ali Moustafa Mosharafa (1898–1950)
• Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898–1988)
• Ivar Waller (1898–1991)
• John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1899–1980)
• Gregory Breit (1899–1981)
• Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim (1899–1985)
• Pelageya Polubarinova-Kochina (1899–1999)
• Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958)
• Fritz London (1900–1954)
• William V. Houston (1900–1968)
• John C. Slater (1900–1976)
• George Eugene Uhlenbeck (1900–1988)

20th century

• Nikolai Kochin (1901–1944)
• Enrico Fermi* (1901–1954)
• Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976)
• Karl Bechert (1901–1981)
• Yuri Rumer (1901–1985)
• Linus Pauling (1901–1994)
• William Allis (1901–1999)
• Otto Laporte (1902–1971)
• Carl Eckart (1902–1973)
• Edward Condon (1902–1974)
• Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (1902–1978)
• Pascual Jordan (1902–1980)
• Paul Dirac (1902–1984)
• Alfred Kastler (1902–1984)
• Eugene Wigner (1902–1995)
• Hans Hellmann (1903–1938)
• John von Neumann (1903–1957)
• Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961)
• Lars Onsager (1903–1976)
• Jacques Yvon (1903–1979)
• Helmut Hönl (1903–1981)
• Mikhail Leontovich (1903–1981)
• Philip M. Morse (1903–1985)
• Andrey Kolmogorov (1903–1987)
• Guido Beck (1903–1988)
• Llewellyn Thomas (1903–1992)
• Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (1903–1996)
• Robert Oppenheimer* (1904–1967)
• George Gamow‡° (1904–1968)
• Ilya Kibel (1904–1970)
• Léon Rosenfeld (1904–1974)
• Otto Robert Frisch (1904–1979)
• Christian Møller (1904–1980)
• Walter Heitler (1904–1981)
• Lev Gurevich (1904–1990)
• Dmitri Ivanenko (1904–1994)
• Ralph Kronig (1904–1995)
• Yulii Khariton (1904–1996)
• George Placzek (1905–1955)
• Felix Bloch (1905–1983)
• Ernst Stueckelberg (1905–1984)
• Herbert Fröhlich (1905–1991)
• Clarence Zener (1905–1993)
• Nevill Francis Mott (1905–1996)
• Matvei Bronstein (1906–1938)
• Ettore Majorana (1906–1938)
• Maria Goeppert-Mayerª (1906–1972)
• Eugene Feenberg (1906–1977)
• Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (1906–1979)
• William Houlder Zachariasen (1906–1979)
• Fritz Sauter (1906–1983)
• Alan Herries Wilson (1906–1995)
• John Gamble Kirkwood (1907–1959)
• J. Hans D. Jensen (1907–1973)
• Hermann Arthur Jahn (1907–1979)
• Dmitrii Blokhintsev (1907–1979)
• Hideki Yukawa (1907–1981)
• Rudolf Peierls (1907–1995)
• Leonid I. Sedov (1907–1999)
• Felix Gantmacher (1908–1964)
• Lev Landau (1908–1968)
• Anatoly Vlasov (1908–1975)
• Șerban Țițeica (1908–1985)
• Valentine Bargmann (1908–1989)
• Ilya Frank (1908–1990)
• John Bardeen (1908–1991)
• Moisey Markov (1908–1994)
• Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995)
• Viktor Ambartsumian (1908–1996)
• Mikhail Elyashevich (1908–1996)
• Sergei Mikhailovich Rytov (1908–1996)
• Hans Euler (1909–1941)
• Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984)
• William Penney, Baron Penney (1909–1991)
• Nikolay Bogolyubov (1909–1992)
• Gian Carlo Wick (1909–1992)
• Nathan Rosen (1909–1995)
• Hendrik Casimir (1909–2000)
• David A. Frank-Kamenetskii (1910–1970)
• Aleksei Zinovyevich Petrov (1910–1972)
• Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985)
• Arseny Sokolov (1910–1986)
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995)
• Vasiliy S. Fursov (1910–1998)
• José Enrique Moyal (1910–1998)
• Sergei Vonsovsky (1910–1998)
• Gregory Hugh Wannier (1911–1983)
• Klaus Fuchs (1911–1988)
• Paul Weiss (1911–1991)
• Arkady Migdal (1911–1991)
• Walter Franz (1911–1992)
• Nicholas Kemmer (1911–1998)
• Aleksander Akhiezer (1911–2000)
• William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995)
• Heinrich Welker (1912–1981)
• Mikhail Volkenshtein (1912–1992)
• Alexander Davydov (1912–1993)
• Siegfried Flügge (1912–1997)
• Aleksandr Aleksandrov (1912–1999)
• Sidney Dancoff (1913–1951)
• Isaak Pomeranchuk (1913–1966)
• Boris Stepanov (1913–1987)
• Frederik Belinfante (1913–1991)
• Henry Primakoff (1914–1983)
• Mark Kac (1914–1984)
• Yakov Zeldovich (1914–1987)
• Bernard Lippmann (1914–1988)
• Lyman Spitzer (1914–1997)
• George Michael Volkoff (1914–2000)
• Leonard I. Schiff (1915–1971)
• Theodore Holstein (1915–1985)
• Evgeny Lifshitz (1915–1985)
• Oleg Firsov (1915–1998)
• Leonid Biberman (1915–1998)
• Nicholas Metropolis (1915–1999)
• John D. Eshelby (1916–1981)
• Elliott Waters Montroll (1916–1983)
• Iosif Shklovsky (1916–1985)
• Kirill Tolpygo (1916–1994)
• Robert Dicke (1916–1997)
• Robert G. Sachs (1916–1999)
• Imre Fényes (1917–1977)
• Ilya Lifshitz (1917–1982)
• Yevgeny Zababakhin (1917–1984)
• Solomon Pekar (1917–1985)
• Veniamin Levich (1917–1987)
• Yurii Perlin (1917–1990)
• David Bohm (1917–1992)
• Dmitry Zubarev (1917–1992)
• Herman Feshbach (1917–2000)
• Richard Feynman (1918–1988)
• Res Jost (1918–1990)
• Julian Schwinger (1918–1994)
• Kirill Gurov (1918–1994)
• Harold Hopkins (1918–1994)
• Irving Segal (1918–1998)
• James Hamilton (1918–2000)
• Abraham Pais (1918–2000)
• Julius Ashkin (1920–1982)
• Ryogo Kubo (1920–1995)
• Herbert S. Green (1920–1999)
• Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989)
• Igor Ternov (1921–1996)
• Feza Gürsey (1921–1992)
• Sergei Tyablikov (1921–1968)
• Melville S. Green (1922–1979)
• Lawrence Biedenharn (1922–1996)
• Jens Lindhard (1922–1997)
• Claude Bloch (1923–1971)
• Kurt Symanzik (1923–1983)
• Harold Grad (1923–1986)
• Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger (1923–1997)
• Gregory Pikus (1923–1998)
• Louis Michel (1923–1999)
• Victor M. Galitskii (1924–1981)
• Léon Van Hove (1924–1990)
• Gregory Garibian (1924–1991)
• Harry Lehmann (1924–1998)
• Efim Fradkin (1924–1999)
• John Clive Ward (1924–2000)
• Sam Treiman (1925–1999)
• Gunnar Källén (1926–1968)
• Eugene P. Gross (1926–1991)
• Abdus Salam (1926–1996)
• Dennis Sciama (1926–1999)
• Aneesur Rahman (1927–1987)
• Yuri Yappa (1927–1998)
• Rolf Landauer (1927–1999)
• Robert Mills (1927–1999)
• John Stewart Bell (1928–1990)
• Gurgen Askaryan (1928–1997)
• Mikhail Krivoglaz (1929–1988)
• David Klyshko (1929–2000)
• Viktor Kovarskii (1929–2000)
• Ruslan Stratonovich (1930–1997)
• Vladimir Gribov (1930–1997)
• John Hubbard (1931–1980)
• Felix Berezin (1931–1980)
• Revaz Dogonadze (1931–1985)
• Emanuil Kaner (1931–1986)
• Luciano Fonda (1931–1998)
• Igor Kobzarev (1932–1991)
• Alexey Andreevich Anselm (1934–1998)
• Vadim Berezinskii (1935–1980)
• Victor Popov (1937–1994)
• Claude Itzykson (1938–1995)
• Arkady Aronov (1939–1994)
• Herbert H. Chen (1942–1987)
• Elizabeth Gardner (1957–1988)

20th–21st century

• Hans Bethe° (1906–2005)
• László Tisza (1907–2009)
• Victor Weisskopf (1908–2002)
• Edward Teller (1908–2003)
• Werner Romberg (1909–2003)
• John Wheeler (1911–2008)
• Frederick Seitz (1911–2008)
• Ugo Fano (1912–2001)
• Evgenii Feinberg (1912–2005)
• Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1912–2007)
• Harald Keres (1912–2010)
• Willis Lamb (1913–2008)
• Maurice Pryce (1913–2003)
• Conyers Herring (1914–2009)
• Anatole Abragam (1914–2011)
• Charles H. Townes (1915–2015)
• Harold Neville Vazeille Temperley (1915–2017)
• Alexey Bonch-Bruevich (1916–2006)
• Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009)
• Charles Kittel (1916–2019)
• Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003)
• Arthur Iberall (1918–2002)
• Clemens C. J. Roothaan (1918–2019)
• Dirk ter Haar (1919–2002)
• Huang Kun (1919–2005)
• Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky (1919–2007)
• Peter Westervelt (1919–2015)
• Isaak Khalatnikov (born 1919)
• James Bruce French (1921–2002)
• Akiva Yaglom (1921–2007)
• Andrew M. Gleason (1921–2008)
• Albert Messiah (1921–2013)
• Nico van Kampen (1921–2013)
• Eugen Merzbacher (1921–2013)
• Takeo Matsubara (1921–2014)
• Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015)
• Jacques Friedel (1921–2014)
• Moisei Isaakovich Kaganov (1921–2014)
• Yang Chen-Ning (born 1922)
• Peter Mazur (1922–2001)
• Melvin Lax (1922–2002)
• Behram Kurşunoğlu (1922–2003)
• Karen Ter-Martirosian (1922–2005)
• Aage Bohr (1922–2009)
• Rudolf Haag (1922–2016)
• Otfried Madelung (1922–2017)
• Emil Wolf (1922–2018)
• Bryce DeWitt (1923–2004)
• Bruno Zumino (1923–2014)
• Walter Kohn (1923–2016)
• Spartak Belyaev (1923–2017)
• Philip Warren Anderson (born 1923)
• Freeman Dyson (born 1923)
• Yuri L. Klimontovich (1924–2002)
• Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri (1924–2005)
• Evan O'Neill Kane (1924–2006)
• Edwin Ernest Salpeter (1924–2008)
• Yasushi Takahashi (1924–2013)
• Keith Brueckner (1924–2014)
• David Pines (1924–2018)
• Yuval Ne'eman (1925–2006)
• John Pople (1925–2004)
• Ted Taylor (1925–2004)
• John Ziman (1925–2005)
• Martin David Kruskal (1925–2006)
• Martin Gutzwiller (1925–2014)
• John David Jackson (1925–2016)
• Roy J. Glauber (1925–2018)
• Giancarlo Ghirardi (1925–2018)
• Toichiro Kinoshita (born 1925)
• Erdal İnönü (1926–2007)
• Karl Rebane (1926–2007)
• Nikolai Borisovich Delone (1926–2008)
• Anatoly Logunov (1926–2015)
• Viktor P. Silin (1926–2019)
• Tsung-Dao Lee (born 1926)
• Ben Roy Mottelson (born 1926)
• Walter Thirring (1927–2014)
• Elihu Abrahams (1927–2018)
• Murray Gerstenhaber (born 1927)
• Emmanuel Rashba (born 1927)
• Yuri Raizer (born 1927)
• Michael Woolfson (born 1927)
• Hermann Haken (born 1927)
• Vladimir I. Ritus (born 1927)
• Arnold Kosevich (1928–2006)
• Vladimir I. Perel (1928–2007)
• Boris Chirikov (1928–2008)
• Reinhard Oehme (1928–2010)
• Robert Brout (1928–2011)
• Richard Arnowitt (1928–2014)
• Samuel Edwards (1928–2015)
• Abner Shimony (1928–2015)
• Kerson Huang (1928–2016)
• Stephen Gasiorowicz (1928–2016)
• Stanley Mandelstam (1928-2016)
• Dmitry Shirkov (1928–2016)
• Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov (1928–2017)
• Roger Elliott (1928–2018)
• Yurii Kagan (1928–2019)
• Ezra T. Newman (born 1928)
• Isaac Bersuker (born 1928)
• Jürgen Ehlers (1929–2008)
• Franco Bassani (1929–2008)
• Vitaly Shafranov (1929–2014)
• Lev Okun (1929–2015)
• Lev Gor'kov (1929–2016)
• Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019)
• Peter Higgs (born 1929)
• Vladimir Moiseevich Agranovich (born 1929)
• Friedwardt Winterberg (born 1929)
• Asoke Nath Mitra (born 1929)
• Kurt Gottfried (born 1929)
• Lars Hedin (1930–2002)
• Albert Tavkhelidze (1930–2010)
• Riazuddin (1930–2013)
• Mildred Dresselhaus (1930–2017)
• George Herbert Weiss (1930–2017)
• Leon Cooper (born 1930)
• Lawrence Paul Horwitz (born 1930)
• Anatoly Nikishov (born 1930)
• Viktor Maslov (born 1930)
• Volker Heine (born 1930)
• Aleksandr Gurevich (born 1930)
• Jun Kondo (born 1930)
• Walter A. Harrison (born 1930)
• Richard M. Weiner (born 1930)
• Gerasim Eliashberg (born 1930)
• John Clayton Taylor (born 1930)
• Richard Liboff (1931–2014)
• Tullio Regge (1931–2014)
• Leonid Keldysh (1931–2016)
• George Sudarshan (1931–2018)
• Leonid Maksimov (1931–2018)
• John Robert Schrieffer (1931–2019)
• Martinus Veltman (born 1931)
• Roger Penrose (born 1931)
• Stanley Deser (born 1931)
• Valery Pokrovsky (born 1931)
• Polina S. Landa (born 1931)
• Igor Dzyaloshinski (born 1931)
• Anatoly Larkin (1932–2005)
• H. Dieter Zeh (1932–2018)
• François Englert (born 1932)
• John R. Klauder (born 1932)
• Sheldon Glashow (born 1932)
• Yakir Aharonov (born 1932)
• Roald Sagdeev (born 1932)
• Philippe Nozières (born 1932)
• Mark Azbel (born 1932)
• Radu Bălescu (1932–2006)
• Alexandr Dykhne (1933–2005)
• Moshe Carmeli (1933–2007)
• Tom Kibble (1933–2016)
• Jeffrey Goldstone (born 1933)
• Steven Weinberg (born 1933)
• Andrzej Trautman (born 1933)
• Lev Pitaevskii (born 1933)
• Julius Wess (1934–2007)
• Evgenii Maksimov (1934–2011)
• Manuel Cardona (1934–2014)
• Ludvig Faddeev (1934–2017)
• Pierre Hohenberg (1934–2017)
• David J. Thouless (1934–2019)
• Hiranmay Sen Gupta (born 1934)
• Albert Schwarz (born 1934)
• John G. Cramer (born 1934)
• Rodney Loudon (born 1934)
• Jacques Villain (born 1934)
• Lowell Brown (born 1934)
• George Zaslavsky (1935–2008)
• Nicola Cabibbo (1935–2010)
• Oktay Sinanoğlu (1935–2015)
• Francesco Calogero (born 1935)
• Gordon Baym (born 1935)
• Yakov Sinai (born 1935)
• Marvin L. Cohen (born 1935)
• David Ruelle (born 1935)
• Herbert Wagner (born 1935)
• Harald J.W. Mueller-Kirsten (born 1935)
• N. David Mermin (born 1935)
• Carl H. Brans (born 1935)
• Hanoch Gutfreund (born 1935)
• Kenneth G. Wilson (1936–2013)
• Gerald Guralnik (1936–2014)
• Peter Freund (1936–2018)
• Rudolf Muradyan (born 1936)
• Abdul Qadeer Khan (born 1936)
• Werner Ebeling (physicist) (born 1936)
• Harold Puthoff (born 1936)
• Sidney Coleman (1937–2007)
• Leo Kadanoff (1937–2015)
• Dietrich Kremp (1937–2017)
• C. R. Hagen (born 1937)
• Iosif Khriplovich (born 1937)
• Leonid Pastur (born 1937)
• Tung-Mow Yan (born 1937)
• A. P. Balachandran (born 1938)
• Anthony James Leggett (born 1938)
• Jayant Narlikar (born 1938)
• Alexander Animalu (born 1938)
• Boris Arbuzov (born 1938)
• Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (born 1938)
• Neil Ashcroft (born 1938)
• Lu Jeu Sham (born 1938)
• Vladimir P. Krainov (born 1938)
• Vitaly Efimov (born 1938)
• Alexei L. Efros (born 1938)
• Boris Struminsky (1939–2003)
• Daniel Z. Freedman (born 1939)
• Stephen L. Adler (born 1939)
• Ratko Janev (born 1939)
• Andrei Slavnov (born 1939)
• Pran Nath (born 1939)
• Vladimir E. Zakharov (born 1939)
• Francisco Jose Yndurain Muñoz (1940–2008)
• Alexei Fridman (1940–2010)
• Lev Lipatov (1940–2017)
• Juansher Chkareuli (born 1940)
• Haim Harari (born 1940)
• Igor Tyutin (born 1940)
• Mikhail Dyakonov (born 1940)
• John Iliopoulos (born 1940)
• Brian David Josephson (born 1940)
• Toshihide Maskawa (born 1940)
• Stanislav Mikheyev (born 1940)
• Leonard Susskind (born 1940)
• Kip Thorne (born 1940)
• Miguel Ángel Virasoro (born 1940)
• Guido Altarelli (1941–2015)
• David Gross (born 1941)
• Vladimir Belinski (born 1941)
• Michael Berry (born 1941)
• Luciano Maiani (born 1941)
• Holger Bech Nielsen (born 1941)
• John Henry Schwarz (born 1941)
• Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)
• Arkady Vainshtein (born 1942)
• Victor Sergeevich Fadin (born 1942)
• Alexander Belavin (born 1942)
• Curtis Callan (born 1942)
• V. Balakrishnan (born 1943)
• Carl M. Bender (born 1943)
• Paul Frampton (born 1943)
• Richard H. Price (born 1943)
• Pierre Ramond (born 1943)
• Jean Zinn-Justin (born 1943)
• J. Michael Kosterlitz (born 1943)
• Kurt Binder (born 1944)
• Makoto Kobayashi (born 1944)
• Rabindra Mohapatra (born 1944)
• Boris Shklovskii (born 1944)
• Michael Thorpe (born 1944)
• Sergio Ferrara (born 1945)
• Alexander Markovich Polyakov (born 1945)
• Michele Parrinello (born 1945)
• Bernard de Wit (born 1945)
• Alexander Migdal (born 1945)
• André Neveu (born 1946)
• Michael Green (born 1946)
• Gerardus 't Hooft (born 1946)
• İsmail Hakkı Duru (born 1946)
• Charles Thorn (born 1946)
• Robert Shekhter (born 1947)
• John Joannopoulos (born 1947)
• Jürg Fröhlich (born 1947)
• Howard Georgi (born 1947)
• Alan Guth (born 1947)
• Michio Kaku (born 1947)
• Roberto Car (born 1947)
• John Cardy (born 1947)
• Walter Selke (born 1947)
• Michael F. Shlesinger (born 1948)
• Thomas Curtright (born 1948)
• Eugene Levich (born 1948)
• Alexei Starobinsky (born 1948)
• Dimitri Nanopoulos (born 1948)
• Andrei Linde (born 1948)
• Giorgio Parisi (born 1948)
• Bennie Ward (born 1948)
• Hugh David Politzer (born 1949)
• Alexander Vilenkin (born 1949)
• Nihat Berker (born 1949)
• Tekin Dereli (born 1949)
• Ayşe Erzan (born 1949)
• Sylvester James Gates (born 1950)
• Robert B. Laughlin (born 1950)
• Stephen Parke (born 1950)
• Goran Senjanovic (born 1950)
• Kyriakos Tamvakis (born 1950)
• Shuichi Nosé (1951–2005)
• Christopher T. Hill (born 1951)
• Alexei Smirnov (born 1951)
• Frank Wilczek (born 1951)
• Edward Witten (born 1951)
• Cosmas Zachos (born 1951)
• F. Duncan Haldane (born 1951)
• Wojciech H. Zurek (born 1951)
• Paul J. Steinhardt (born 1952)
• Alexander Zamolodchikov (born 1952)
• Alexei Zamolodchikov (1952–2007)
• Peter Guy Wolynes (born 1953)
• Boris Feigin (born 1953)
• Ali Chamseddine (born 1953)
• Sankar Das Sarma (born 1953)
• Stephan W. Koch (born 1953)
• David Deutsch (born 1953)
• John Preskill (born 1953)
• José W. F. Valle (born 1953)
• Mark B. Wise (born 1953)
• Lawrence M. Krauss (born 1954)
• Joseph Polchinski (1954–2018)
• Julia Yeomans (born 1954)
• David Vanderbilt (born 1954)
• Lee Smolin (born 1955)
• Valery Rubakov (born 1955)
• Boris Altshuler (born 1955)
• Fulvio Melia (born 1956)
• David Lindley (born 1956)
• Viatcheslav Mukhanov (born 1956)
• Carlo Rovelli (born 1956)
• Nathan Seiberg (born 1956)
• Ashoke Sen (born 1956)
• Joseph Lykken (born 1957)
• Mikhail Katsnelson (born 1957)
• Thanu Padmanabhan (born 1957)
• Neil Turok (born 1958)
• Piers Coleman (born 1958)
• Cumrun Vafa (born 1960)
• Carlo Beenakker (born 1960)
• Xiao-Gang Wen (born 1961)
• Michael R. Douglas (born 1961)
• Gian F. Giudice (born 1961)
• Erik Verlinde (born 1961)
• Jean-Philippe Bouchaud (born 1962)
• Marcela Carena (born 1962)
• Igor Klebanov (born 1962)
• Lisa Randallª (born 1962)
• Carlos E.M. Wagner (born 1962)
• Brian Greene (born 1963)
• Gerald B. Cleaver (born 1963)
• Alexei Kitaev (born 1963)
• Miguel Alcubierre (born 1964)
• Raman Sundrum (born 1964)
• Stephen Hsu (born 1966)
• Durmus A. Demir (born 1967)
• João Magueijo (born 1967)
• Antony Garrett Lisi (born 1968)
• Juan Maldacena (born 1968)
• Laura Mersini-Houghtonª (born 1969)
• Dam Thanh Son (born 1969)
• Vlatko Vedral (born 1971)
• Shiraz Minwalla (born 1972)
• Nima Arkani-Hamed (born 1972)
• Steven Gubser (1972–2019)
• Maxim Chernodub (born 1973)
• Luboš Motl (born 1973)
• Cédric Villani (born 1973)
• Yasunori Nomura (born 1974)
• K. S. Babu
• Gabor Forgacs
• Mehran Kardar
• Bianca Dittrichª (born 1977)

Fictional theoretical physicists

• Gordon Freeman
• Eli Vance
• Isaac Kleiner
• Rodney McKay
• Samantha Carterª
• Larry Fleinhardt
• Leonardo Vetra
• Quinn Mallory
• Maximillian Arturo
• Nicholas Rush
• Daniel Faraday
• Catherine Elizabeth Halsey
• Milo Rambaldi
• Reed Richards
• Victor Von Doom
• Radek Zelenka
• Sheldon Cooper
• Rosalind and Robert Lutece
• Rick Sanchez

See also

• Academic genealogy of theoretical physicists
• List of scientists
• List of physicists
• List of women in theoretical physics

Notes

* Experimentalist also

º Astronomer, astrophysicist or cosmologist also

^ Developed new mathematics

† Contributed to chemistry

‡ Contributed to biology

ª List of women in theoretical physics also