5 lives in this collection worked in magnetism, from 1544 to today. Each has a full course on their life and the mathematics and physics they made.
Elizabethan physician whose De Magnete (1600) showed that the Earth is a great magnet and first distinguished electrical from magnetic attraction.
magnetism, electricity, geomagnetism
French military engineer and physicist who measured the inverse-square law of electric force with his torsion balance and founded the classical laws of friction and earth pressure.
electrostatics, magnetism, applied mechanics
French physicist who discovered piezoelectricity with his brother Jacques, formulated the symmetry principle and Curie's law of magnetism, and co-discovered polonium and radium with Marie Curie.
physics, crystallography, piezoelectricity
French physicist who created the Langevin equation and the theory of para- and diamagnetism, framed the twin paradox, pioneered ultrasonic sonar, and led antifascist and educational causes.
statistical physics, magnetism, relativity
Soviet experimental physicist who built record pulsed magnets at Cambridge, invented the expansion-engine helium liquefier and the low-pressure oxygen turboexpander, and discovered superfluidity, winning the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.
low-temperature physics, magnetism, cryogenic engineering