People in Physics by Topic
Light & Optics
James Roche is part artist, part skateboarder, part physicist, and full time funny man. This physicist and APS project coordinator knows how to make any experience fun and exciting. Physics after all, can be funny.
Peter Sorokin invented the world's second and third lasers and pioneered the ability to build lasers in all colors of the rainbow. And if that wasn't enough for one man, he is using laser physics to explain the light from distant stars.
James Wynne is the author of numerous articles and scientific journals and the holder of many patents, including several in laser dentistry and laser dermatology, and has received numerous Outstanding Innovation Awards throughout his career at IBM.
Margaret Murnane has a fascinating story to tell - if you can keep up with her. In a sense, Murnane is the fastest person who ever lived.
Millie Dresselhaus is one of the very first laser scientists. She quickly took this new invention and started using it to investigate the properties of matter. As well as pioneering laser science, she has promoted opportunities for women in science.
Hiking, camping, kayaking and snorkeling while traveling throughout the Czech Republic, Turkey, Austria, Hawaii, Greece, Wales, Wyoming, Scotland, and most recently Germany. This is the life of a space scientist... if your name is Carol Paty. She shows us that you don't need to stay at home to in order to study the solar system.
Laura Smoliar became interested in physics at a young age – her mother was a physicist. “Sometimes I’d get to go to her lab,” Smoliar said. “It was a fun place. There were lots of toys.”
Jorge Pullin has made a career of studying a weighty subject: gravity. He uses theories of gravity to predict what will happen when black holes collide.
Andrew Post-Zwicker is absolutely fascinated by plasmas. He is shown here on a bad hair day (actually a demo with a van de graf generator).
"I grew up in Philadelphia building houses with my father," says Richard Superfine-yes, that is his real name. "That has led me to always appreciate experimental work and using my hands and getting tangible results."
Medical physics is not a well-known field, but it's an extremely important one, says medical physicist Albin Gonzalez. Gonzalez works with high-tech machines of the same type of accelerators used in cutting-edge science.
Every once in a while, you meet someone who proves that the worlds of science and art are not intellectual opposites. Charles Falco is such a person.
In 1999, after years of practice, Lene Hau learned how to bicycle at the speed of light.
Ancient Navajo thought contains many parallels to modern scientific concepts, including radiation (Tsa'jilgish in the Navajo language), and lasers (Hatsoo'algha k'aa'), according to Navajo physicist Fred Begay, who has spent hundreds of hours translating and making the connections between traditional Navajo beliefs and modern science.