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Pierre Curie
Pierre and his older brother demonstrated that an electric potential was generated when crystals were compressed - piezoelectricity. To provide accurate measurements needed for their work, Pierre created a highly sensitive instrument called the Curie Scale. -
Wilhelm Röntgen
Produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays -
Henri Becquerel
Discovered that Uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power -
Marie Curie
Isolated Polonium and Radium -
Hans Geiger
Worked with Ernest Rutherford and Ernest Marsden to conduct the "gold foil experiment". -
Hans Geiger
Rutherford and Geiger created the Rutherford-Geiger tube, later to become the Geiger tube. -
Leo Szilard
Wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. In addition to the nuclear reactor, Szilard submitted patent applications for a linear accelerator in 1928, and a cyclotron in 1929. He also conceived the idea of an electron microscope. Between 1926 and 1930, he worked with Einstein on the development of the Einstein refrigerator. -
James Chadwick
Discovered the neutron -
Luis Walter Alvarez
Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never observed. He produced tritium using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron. -
Enrico Fermi
Italian physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor. He made significant contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. -
Stanislaw Ulam
He participated in America's Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons and suggested nuclear pulse propulsion. Ulam considered the problem of nuclear propulsion of rockets, which was pursued by Project Rover, and proposed, as an alternative to Rover's nuclear thermal rocket, to harness small nuclear explosions for propulsion, which became Project Orion. -
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project. -
Willard Libby
Development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology. -
Edward Teller
"The father of the hydrogen bomb" - early member of the Manhattan Project, charged with developing the first atomic bomb. During this time he made a serious push to develop the first fusion-based weapons as well, but these were deferred until after World War II.