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William Rontgen
German/Dutch engineer and physicist who received a Nobel Prize in Physics for producing electromagnetic radiation in waves that humans could see known as X-rays. X-rays are also called Rontgen rays. -
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Henri Becquerel
French physicist who discovered radioactivity through his investigations of uranium and other substances alongside Marie and Pierre Curie. The SI unit for radioactivity was named after him. -
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Pierre Curie
Discovered the effect of temperature on certain magnetic properties (Curie's Law). With his wife, Marie Curie, he discovered the elements radium and polonium. He, his wife, and Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 for their study on spontaneous radiation. -
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Marie Curie
Physicist and chemist who helped discover the phenomenon of radioactivity as well as the radioactive elements Podium and Radium. Curie also was one of the first researchers for tumors with radiation, and she was the founder of Curie Institutes. -
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Hans Geiger
German physicist who was the co-inventor of the Geiger counter, which measures ionizing radiation. He also discovered the atomic nucleus in the Geiger-Marsden experiment with Ernest Rutherford. With John Mitchell Nuttall, he created the Geiger-Nuttall law, which is a formula that shows the relationship between the half-life of a radioactive isoptope and the energy of alpha particles. -
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James Chadwick
Worked under Ernest Rutherford on numerous radioactivity problems. They transmuted light elements by bombarding them with alpha particles and studied the atomic nucleus. He proved the existence of neutrons, which led to the fission of uranium 235 and the creation of the atomic bomb. -
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Leo Szilard
Student of Albert Einstein and Max Planck. He helped convince Albert Einstein to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about the US building the atomic bomb. He was a part of the Manhattan Project, which transformed atomic energy for military purposes and created the first nuclear reactor. -
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Enrico Fermi
Discovered the statistical laws that govern the particles in Pauli's exclusion principle (Fermi Statistics). He showed that nuclear transformation occurs in most elements bombarded by neutrons. This led to the discovery of slow neutrons, nuclear fission, and elements beyond the Periodic Table. -
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J. Robert Oppenheimer
American physicist who is known as the father of the atomic bomb. He had a role in the Manhattan Project and advocated for international control of nuclear power and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. He researched molecular wave functions, the theory of electrons and positrons, nuclear fusion, neutron stars and black holes, and the quantum theory ( as well as many other topics). -
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Willard Frank Libby
American chemist who is most known for his help in the development of radiocarbon dating and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this. He developed the process of dating compounds using carbon-14. Supported the creation of the hydrogen bomb and atmospheric nuclear testing. -
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Luis Walter Alvarez
American physicist awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering resonance particles, subatomic particles that have extremely short lifetimes and only occur in very high-energy nuclear collisions. He and Felix Bloch were the first people to measure the magnetic moment of the neutron, which is a characteristic of the strength and direction of its magnetic field. -
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Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam
Together they created the Teller-Ulam design which is used in all modern nuclear weapons. They used nuclear fission and fusion to create a powerful hydrogen bomb. Teller became known as the father of the hydrogen bomb.