Vocation : Science : Physics

Erich Rudolf Bagge (30 May 1912, in Neustadt bei Coburg – 5 June 1996, in Kiel) was a German scientist. Bagge, a student of Werner Heisenberg for his doctorate and Habilitation, was engaged in German Atomic Energy research and the German nuclear energy project during the Second World War. He worked as an Assistant at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik in Berlin. Bagge, who became associated professor at the University of Hamburg in 1948, was in particular involved in the usage of nuclear power for trading vessels, and he was one of the founders of the Society for the Usage of Nuclear Energy in Ship-Building and Seafare.

The first German nuclear vessel, the "NS Otto Hahn", was launched in 1962. A research reactor was installed in Geesthacht near Hamburg at about the same time which has over the years formed into a center for materials research with neutrons.

Robley Cook Williams (October 13, 1908 – January 3, 1995) was an early biophysicist and virologist. He served as the first president of the Biophysical Society.

Theodore Thomas Puck (September 24, 1916 – November 6, 2005) was an American geneticist born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Chicago public schools and obtained his bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree from the University of Chicago. His PhD work was on the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom and his doctoral adviser was James Franck. During WW II Puck stayed at the University of Chicago. There he worked in the laboratory of Oswald H. Robertson on the study of how bacteria and viruses can spread through the air and on dust particles. After a postdoc position in the laboratory of Renato Dulbecco, Puck was recruited in 1948 to establish and chair the University of Colorado Medical School's department of biophysics. He retired from the University of Colorado Medical School in 1995 as professor emeritus, but continued to do laboratory work there until a few weeks before his death.Puck was an early pioneer of "somatic cell genetics" and single-cell plating ( i.e. "cloning" .) This work allowed the genetics of human and other mammalian cells to be studied in detail. Puck's key work ultimately made modern genetics, such as the human genome and other mammalian genome projects, possible. Dr. Puck with the assistance of Philip I. Marcus, successfully cloned a HeLa cell in 1955.
Puck made many basic discoveries in several areas. Confirming research done in 1956 by Joe Hin Tjio, Puck's team found that humans had 46 chromosomes rather than 48 which had earlier been believed. He developed the CHO cell line from Chinese hamster ovarian cells for this work and contributed to deeper insights into chromosomes and genetics of mammalian cells. Derived CHO cell lines became the most productive manufacturing approach for therapeutic proteins, resulting in hundreds of highly efficient drugs. Puck studied X-rays and cellular mutations. He also isolated and studied cellular mutations.
Puck has won a number of honors for his work most notably the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1958. In 1973 he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Renato Dulbecco and Harry Eagle. Dulbecco won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1975. Puck also founded the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute at the University of Denver, where he was an emeritus professor. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1960, Puck published more than 200 papers on topics including Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome, and optimising radiotherapy dosages for the treatment of cancer.
He died following complications from a broken hip. Upon his death he was survived by his widow, three daughters, and seven grandchildren.

Robert Benjamin Leighton (; September 10, 1919 – March 9, 1997) was a prominent American experimental physicist who spent his professional career at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). His work over the years spanned solid state physics, cosmic ray physics, the beginnings of modern particle physics, solar physics, the planets, infrared astronomy, and millimeter- and submillimeter-wave astronomy. In the latter four fields, his pioneering work opened up entirely new areas of research that subsequently developed into vigorous scientific communities.

Leon Knopoff (July 1, 1925 – January 20, 2011) was an American geophysicist and musicologist. He received his education at Caltech, graduating in 1949 with a PhD in physics, and came to UCLA the following year. He served on the UCLA faculty for 60 years. His research interests spanned a wide variety of fields and included the physics and statistics of earthquakes, earthquake prediction, the interior structure of the Earth, plate tectonics, pattern recognition, non-linear earthquake dynamics and several other areas of solid Earth geophysics. He also made contributions to the fields of musical perception and archaeology.

Allan Verne Cox (December 17, 1926 – January 27, 1987) was an American geophysicist. His work on dating geomagnetic reversals, with Richard Doell and Brent Dalrymple, made a major contribution to the theory of plate tectonics. Allan Cox won numerous awards, including the prestigious Vetlesen Prize, and was the president of the American Geophysical Union. He was the author of over a hundred scientific papers, and the author or editor of two books on plate tectonics. On January 27, 1987, Cox died in an apparent suicide.

Louis Leprince-Ringuet (27 March 1901, in Alès – 23 December 2000, in Paris) was a French physicist, telecommunications engineer, essayist and historian of science.Leprince-Ringuet advocated strongly for the creation of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and remained its indefatigable supporter. He was vice chair (1956–69) and chair (1964–66) of CERN’s scientific policy committee. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society.He is known for early discovery of the kaon. He also coined the term hyperon in 1953.

Herbert John Cecil Kouts (December 18, 1919 – January 7, 2008) was an American nuclear physicist and engineer, a pioneer in nuclear safety, director of nuclear reactor safety research at the Atomic Energy Commission.
Kouts was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 "for contributions in nuclear engineering, especially physical principles and safety of nuclear power reactors and nuclear materials safeguards".
Kouts received the Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1963.Born in Bisbee, Arizona, Kouts attended Ball High School in Galveston, Texas from 1933 to 1935 and graduated from C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport, Louisiana in June 1936. He then attended Louisiana State University, earning a B.A. degree in mathematics in June 1941 and continuing graduate studies until January 1942. He was commissioned in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1942 and then served as an airborne radar specialist in the Army Air Forces until 1945. After World War II, Kouts returned to Louisiana State in September 1945 and completed an M.S. degree in physics in June 1946. He then attended Princeton University, receiving a Ph.D. degree in physics in January 1952. His doctoral thesis was entitled An investigation into certain features of the motion of a rigid charge distribution.Kouts died at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital in East Patchogue, New York from congestive heart failure and complications from a fall.

Maurice de Broglie, 6th Duke of Broglie (27 April 1875 – 14 July 1960) was a French physicist. His younger brother was the theoretical physicist Louis de Broglie.