45 lives in this collection worked in mathematical physics, from 1685 to today. Each has a full course on their life and the mathematics and physics they made.
Often together with: differential geometry, celestial mechanics, number theory, probability theory, algebraic geometry, analysis, differential equations, elasticity, functional analysis, potential theory. All fields
English mathematician of Newton's circle who published the Taylor series and the calculus of finite differences in 1715, the first mathematical theory of the vibrating string, and a geometric theory of perspective.
calculus, finite differences, mathematical physics
Scottish Newtonian whose Treatise of Fluxions gave a rigorous calculus, the integral test and the Euler–Maclaurin formula, and who found the equilibrium figures of rotating fluid bodies.
calculus, analysis, geometry
Author of the Mécanique céleste, who established the stability of the solar system to first order, founded potential theory and made probability a science of inference.
celestial mechanics, potential theory, probability theory
Founder of the mathematical theory of heat conduction, inventor of Fourier series and the Fourier integral, and the first to describe the atmosphere's warming of the Earth.
mathematical physics, heat conduction, fourier analysis
Self-taught mathematician and science writer whose Mechanism of the Heavens brought Laplace's celestial mechanics into English and whose Connexion of the Physical Sciences prompted the coining of the word 'scientist'.
celestial mechanics, mathematical physics, physical geography
Leading French mathematical physicist after Laplace, known for Poisson's equation, the Poisson bracket, the Poisson kernel and summation formula, and the Poisson distribution.
mathematical physics, celestial mechanics, potential theory
German physicist who established by experiment and theory that the current in a circuit is proportional to its driving tension and inversely proportional to its resistance.
electricity, mathematical physics, acoustics
Engineer and mathematician who gave work and kinetic energy their modern definitions and derived the compound centrifugal force, now called the Coriolis force, in rotating frames.
mechanics, engineering, mathematical physics
Self-taught Nottingham miller who introduced the potential function, Green's theorem and Green's functions in his 1828 Essay.
potential theory, mathematical physics, electrostatics
Astronomer Royal for 46 years who fixed the Greenwich meridian and gave his name to the Airy disk, the Airy function, Airy isostasy and the Airy stress function.
astronomy, optics, geodesy
Stettin schoolteacher whose Ausdehnungslehre founded linear algebra and the exterior product, and whose work on Sanskrit gave linguistics Grassmann's law.
linear algebra, exterior algebra, geometry
French analyst who founded the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, published Galois's work, constructed the first transcendental numbers and gave his name to theorems on eigenvalue problems, phase-space volume, elementary integrals and conformal maps.
analysis, differential equations, mathematical physics
Irish-born Cambridge mathematical physicist, Lucasian Professor for 54 years, known for the Navier–Stokes equations, Stokes's law, fluorescence, the Stokes parameters and Stokes's theorem.
fluid dynamics, optics, mathematical physics
Founder of classical thermodynamics who stated the second law, introduced internal energy and entropy, and introduced the mean free path and the virial theorem in the kinetic theory of gases.
thermodynamics, kinetic theory of gases, mathematical physics
Mathematical physicist who formulated the circuit laws, founded spectral analysis with Bunsen, and stated the law of thermal radiation that defined the black-body problem.
mathematical physics, electrical circuits, spectroscopy
Founder of Riemann surfaces and Riemannian geometry, and author of the 1859 paper linking the primes to the zeros of the zeta function.
complex analysis, differential geometry, analytic number theory
Edinburgh natural philosopher who co-wrote the Treatise on Natural Philosophy with Kelvin, championed quaternions, and founded knot theory with the first knot tables.
mathematical physics, knot theory, graph theory
Italian geometer who gave the first models of Lobachevsky's hyperbolic geometry, proving it as consistent as Euclid's, and whose name survives on the Laplace–Beltrami operator.
differential geometry, non-euclidean geometry, mathematical physics
Yale physicist who founded chemical thermodynamics, created the ensemble formulation of statistical mechanics and introduced modern vector analysis.
thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, physical chemistry
Italian mathematician who created the absolute differential calculus (tensor calculus), introduced covariant differentiation and the Ricci tensor, and with Levi-Civita wrote the 1900 memoir that became the mathematical language of general relativity.
differential geometry, tensor calculus, mathematical physics
Universal mathematician who created automorphic functions, the qualitative theory of dynamical systems and algebraic topology, discovered chaos in the three-body problem, and formulated the Lorentz group of relativity.
complex analysis, differential equations, celestial mechanics
French analyst known for the Picard theorems on entire functions, Picard iteration, Picard–Vessiot theory and the Picard group, and permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences from 1917 to 1941.
complex analysis, differential equations, algebraic geometry
Founder of the modern theory of stability of motion, author of Lyapunov functions and exponents, and prover of the central limit theorem by characteristic functions.
stability theory, differential equations, probability theory
Italian analyst who founded the theory of functionals and of Volterra integral equations, created the theory of elastic distortions, and with Lotka founded mathematical population dynamics.
functional analysis, integral equations, mathematical physics
Leader of Göttingen mathematics whose basis theorem, Zahlbericht, axioms of geometry, Hilbert space, Paris problems and proof theory shaped twentieth-century mathematics.
invariant theory, algebraic number theory, foundations of geometry
Creator of the geometry of numbers and of the four-dimensional spacetime formulation of special relativity.
number theory, geometry of numbers, convex geometry
Swedish analyst whose 1903 theory of linear integral equations, with the Fredholm determinant and the Fredholm alternative, launched spectral theory and modern functional analysis.
integral equations, operator theory, partial differential equations
Theoretical physicist who extended Bohr's atom to elliptic and relativistic orbits, introduced the fine-structure constant, founded the quantum free-electron theory of metals, and trained the leading Munich school of theoretical physics.
theoretical physics, mathematical physics, atomic physics
Completed the classification of simple Lie algebras, discovered spinors, and created exterior differential forms, moving frames, connections with torsion and symmetric spaces.
lie groups and lie algebras, differential geometry, exterior differential systems
British mathematical physicist who founded the theory of gravitational instability and stellar dynamics, co-derived the Rayleigh–Jeans law, and became a leading popularizer of astronomy.
mathematical physics, astrophysics, stellar dynamics
Founder of modern abstract algebra and author of the theorems linking symmetries to conservation laws.
abstract algebra, invariant theory, mathematical physics
Universal mathematician who founded gauge theory and the representation theory of compact Lie groups, and proved the Weyl law and the equidistribution theorem.
analysis, lie groups and representation theory, differential geometry
Analyst of variational and eigenvalue problems, co-author of the CFL condition, and founder of the mathematical institutes at Göttingen and New York University.
analysis, partial differential equations, calculus of variations
English theoretical physicist who gave quantum mechanics its general formulation, wrote the relativistic equation of the electron and predicted antimatter.
quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, mathematical physics
Author of Moderne Algebra, which gave abstract algebra its modern form, and of foundational work in algebraic geometry, Ramsey theory and the history of ancient science.
abstract algebra, algebraic geometry, combinatorics
Mathematician who founded the Hilbert-space formulation of quantum mechanics, operator algebras and game theory, and defined the stored-program computer.
set theory, mathematical physics, functional analysis
Polish-American mathematician of the Lwów school who introduced measurable cardinals, conjectured the Borsuk–Ulam theorem, invented the Monte Carlo method, co-designed the hydrogen bomb and ran the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou experiment.
set theory, measure theory, topology
Founder of the theory of Banach and C*-algebras and of the representation theory of non-compact groups, whose Moscow seminar shaped generations of mathematicians.
functional analysis, representation theory, operator algebras
Physicist turned mathematician who created the harmonic analysis of semisimple Lie groups, from the Harish-Chandra isomorphism to the discrete series and the Plancherel formula.
representation theory, harmonic analysis, lie groups
Geometer who founded topological K-theory, proved the index theorem with Isadore Singer, and joined geometry to gauge theory and quantum field theory.
geometry, topology, k-theory
Founder of the modern theory of chaotic dynamical systems through Kolmogorov–Sinai entropy, dispersing billiards, Markov partitions and SRB measures, and a leader of rigorous statistical physics.
ergodic theory, dynamical systems, mathematical physics
Founder of the Langlands programme, which conjectures deep correspondences between Galois representations and automorphic forms through the principle of functoriality.
number theory, automorphic forms, representation theory
Theoretical physicist and first physicist to win the Fields Medal, whose work on supersymmetry, topological field theory and string theory reshaped geometry and topology.
theoretical physics, string theory, quantum field theory
Proved the Langlands correspondence for GL(2) over function fields with Drinfeld modules and shtukas, and created quantum groups, associators and, with Beilinson, the geometric Langlands framework of opers and chiral algebras.
number theory, algebraic geometry, representation theory
Fields Medallist who turned ideas from quantum field theory and string theory into mathematics, proving Witten's conjecture and founding homological mirror symmetry and deformation quantization of Poisson manifolds.
algebraic geometry, mathematical physics, symplectic geometry