Max Erik Tegmark is a Swedish-American physicist, machine learning researcher and author. He is best known for his book Life 3.0 about what the world might look like as artificial intelligence continues to improve. Tegmark is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute.
Isadore Manuel Singer was an American mathematician. He was an Emeritus Institute Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Donald Arthur Glaser was an American physicist, neurobiologist, and the winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber used in subatomic particle physics.
Charles Hard Townes was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with both maser and laser devices. He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. Townes was an adviser to the United States Government, meeting every US president from Harry S. Truman (1945) to Bill Clinton (1999).
Robert Joseph Birgeneau is a Canadian-American physicist and university administrator. He was the ninth chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley from 2004–13, and the fourteenth president of the University of Toronto from 2000-04.
Gerard Kitchen O'Neill was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder. He founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization.
VictorFrederick "Viki" Weisskopf was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Niels Bohr. During World War II he was Deputy Division Leader of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and he later campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Piermaria Jorge Oddone is a Peruvian-American particle physicist.
Henry Way Kendall was an American particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990 jointly with Jerome Isaac Friedman and Richard E. Taylor "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics."
James Harris Simons was an American hedge fund manager, investor, mathematician, and philanthropist. At the time of his death, Simons's net worth was estimated to be $31.4 billion, making him the 51st-richest person in the world. He was the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York. He and his fund are known to be quantitative investors, using mathematical models and algorithms to make investment gains from market inefficiencies. Due to the long-term aggregate investment returns of Renaissance and its Medallion Fund, Simons was described as the "greatest investor on Wall Street," and more specifically "the most successful hedge fund manager of all time".
The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation is an American non-profit organization that awards prestigious fellowships to Ph.D. students in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences. The fellowship provides students with up to $250,000 of support over five years, giving them flexibility and the ability to pursue their own interests, as well as mentoring from alumni fellows. Fellowship recipients pledge to make their skills available to the United States in times of national emergency.
A debate exists within the United States government and American society at large over whether the one-cent coin, the penny, should be eliminated as a unit of currency in the United States. The penny costs more to produce than the one cent it is worth, meaning the seigniorage is negative – the government loses money on every penny that is created. Several bills introduced in the U.S. Congress would have ceased production of pennies, but none have been approved. Such bills would leave the five-cent coin, or nickel, as the lowest-value coin minted in the United States.
Steven Chu is an American physicist and former government official. He is a Nobel laureate and was the 12th U.S. secretary of energy. He is currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. He is known for his research at the University of California, Berkeley, and his research at Bell Laboratories and Stanford University regarding the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, for which he shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips.
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and is the former director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Peter Adalbert Wolff was an American physicist who is considered a pioneer in semiconductor research. He earned his PhD in physics at UC Berkeley with Robert Serber as thesis advisor in 1951 and began his career at the Bell Telephone Laboratories the following year. Thereafter Wolff joined the physics department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1970, becoming head of the condensed matter and atomic physics division. Together with P. M. Platzman, he coauthored the textbook Waves and Interactions in Solid State Plasmas (1973). In 1976 he moved on to the directorship of the Research Laboratory of Electronics and then of the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory in 1981. Wolff left the director's chair in 1987 and retired from his faculty position in 1989 to become a fellow of the newly created NEC Research Institute at Princeton University. In 1994 he returned to MIT as the leader of the physics/industry forum for the physics department and remained a professor emeritus there until his death.
Charles Kittel was an American physicist. He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 1951 and was professor emeritus from 1978 until his death.
Saul Hertz, M.D. was an American physician who devised the medical uses of radioactive iodine. Hertz pioneered the first targeted cancer therapies. Hertz is called the father of the field of theranostics, combining diagnostic imaging with therapy in a single or paired chemical substance(s).
Vera Kistiakowsky was an American research physicist, teacher, and arms control activist. She was professor emerita at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the physics department and Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and was an activist for women's participation in the sciences. Kistiakowsky was an expert in experimental particle physics and observational astrophysics. Her hobbies included climbing mountains, and she liked to maintain an energetic and fit lifestyle. She was the first woman appointed MIT professor of physics in 1972.
John D. Joannopoulos is an American physicist, focused in condensed matter theory. He is currently the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an Elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), an Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S), and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and American Physical Society (APS).
Jesse Thaler is an American particle physicist who is a professor at the MIT Department of Physics. He was named director of the NSF Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) upon its creation in August 2020.
