4.0.5 Inspiring Physicists
Physics as a science has been around for (arguably) 400 years, and physicists have come from all cultures, backgrounds and ethnicities. But they have all shared the same characteristics: insatiable curiosity, an open, inquiring mind and an insistence on seeing the evidence (even if the evidence is a mathematical proof!) If you want to find out more about physicists you might have heard about, start here - and perhaps find out about some physicists you have never heard about, too!
Claims to fame: research that led to touch-tone telephony and fibre-optic cables. First African-American woman to receive a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to chair the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and to chair a major technological institute (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York USA)
Nationality: USA
Claims to fame: first observed celestial bodies using a telescope he made himself; devised emprirical laws of motion by carrying out experiments he designed himself; used Copernicus's ideas to argue that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the centre of the 'cosmos,' ... and much more!
Nationality: Italy (born Pisa, died Arcetri, near Florence)
Claim to fame: The Chandrasekhar limit, which determines the mass at which a dying star's supernova will continue to collapse beyond the stable white dwarf stage for form a neutron star or black hole.
Awarded 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics (with William A. Fowler) for his work on stellar evolution.
Nationality: USA (born India)
