Vocation : Science : Physics

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (; 18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the combined electric and magnetic forces acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. Lorentz was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency, resulting in abnormal refractive indices.
According to the biography published by the Nobel Foundation, "It may well be said that Lorentz was regarded by all theoretical physicists as the world's leading spirit, who completed what was left unfinished by his predecessors and prepared the ground for the fruitful reception of the new ideas based on the quantum theory." He received many other honours and distinctions, including a term as chairman of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, the forerunner of UNESCO, between 1925 and 1928.

Antonino Zichichi (Italian pronunciation: [antoˈniːno ddziˈkiːki]; born 15 October 1929) is an Italian physicist who has worked in the field of nuclear physics. He has served as President of the World Federation of Scientists and as a professor at the University of Bologna.

Aurélien Barrau (born 19 May 1973, in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French physicist and philosopher, specialized in astroparticle physics, black holes and cosmology. He is the director of the Grenoble Center for Theoretical Physics, works in the CNRS Laboratory for Subatomic Physics and Cosmology (LPSC), and is a professor at the Joseph Fourier University (now the Université Grenoble Alpes).
He was awarded the 2006 Bogoliubov Prize in theoretical physics for his research on quantum black holes and primordial cosmology. He was awarded the 2012 European Thibaud prize in subatomic physics. He is a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). He was awarded the Joseph Fourier University medal in 2010. He was invited both at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (France) and at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) as a visitor. He is member of the French national scientific council and referee for many international research agencies.
He has written more than 100 refereed research articles. After working on gamma-ray astrophysics and large-field surveys (LSST), he obtained new results in quantum cosmology and about the evaporation of black holes. His main recent contributions are focused on the early universe, especially in bouncing models, and on a local perspective on quantum properties of black holes. He also proposed original hypotheses for dark matter and the behavior of the Universe around the Big Bang. He worked on both loop quantum gravity and string theory.
He is involved in scientific popularization, collaborates with artists (Olafur Eliasson, Michelangelo Pistoletto) and film makers (Claire Denis). He is a member of the editorial board of literature and poetry journals (Hors-Sol, Diacritik).
He is also PhD in philosophy from Paris-Sorbonne University and has written books and articles with the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. He worked on metaphysical questions about truth and multiplicity. He has published 2 poetry books.
In 2019, with the actress Juliette Binoche, he launched a call to fight the ecological crisis. The text was signed by many scientists, together with artists like Patti Smith or Wim Wenders. In 2020, he wrote a second international tribune, signed by 20 Nobel Prize winners and many stars, explicitly saying that we are facing a systemic problem. The text also says that "the pursuit of consumerism and an obsession with productivity have led us to deny the value of life itself".

Hartland Sweet Snyder (1913, Salt Lake City – 1962) was an American physicist who, together with Robert Oppenheimer, showed how large stars would collapse to form black holes. This work modeled the gravitational collapse of a pressure-free homogeneous fluid sphere and found that it would be unable to communicate with the rest of the universe.
This discovery was depicted in the movie Oppenheimer, where Snyder was portrayed by actor Rory Keane.Historian of physics David C. Cassidy assessed that this prediction of black holes might have won a Nobel Prize in Physics had the authors been alive in the 1990s when evidence was available.Some publications Snyder authored together with Ernest Courant laid the foundations for the field of accelerator physics. In particular, Snyder with Courant and Milton Stanley Livingston developed the principle of strong focusing that made modern particle accelerators possible. The Courant–Snyder parameters, a method of characterizing the distribution of particles in a beam, were an important part of that contribution.In 1954, Snyder bet against Maurice Goldhaber that antiprotons existed, and won.

Eduard August Grüneisen (26 May 1877 – 5 April 1949) was a German physicist. The dimensionless thermodynamic measure known as Grüneisen parameter is named after him.

Wilhelm Lenz (February 8, 1888 in Frankfurt am Main – April 30, 1957 in Hamburg) was a German physicist, most notable for his invention of the Ising model and for his application of the Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector to the old quantum mechanical treatment of hydrogen-like atoms.

Reinhard Mecke (born 14 July 1895 in Stettin; died 30 December 1969) was a German physicist, who focused on chemical physics. He was one of the pioneers of infrared spectroscopy.
Reinhard Mecke studied from 1913 mathematics and physics at the universities of Freiburg, Bern and Marburg and did his doctorate at Franz Richarz in Marburg in 1920 on halos in homogeneous nebulas. He then worked for Heinrich Konen at the university of Bonn, where he habilitated in 1923 on spectral bands of jod and where he became a privatdozent. 1927 he married one of his PhD students M. Guillery and had with her nine children including Dieter Mecke.
1932 he became extraordinary professor for chemical physics at the University of Heidelberg, as proposed by Max Trautz. He investigated spectral bands of evaporated water and infrared and Raman spectroscopy of small organic molecules. He proved the existence of the spin onto rotary oscillation spectra of molecules. 1937 he became professor for theoretical physics at the university of Freiburg and investigated there hydrogen bonds by infrared spectroscopy. 1942 he became ordinary professor and director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry. Additionally, he was in 1958 the founder and until 1968 the director of the Institute for electric materials (Institut für Elektrowerkstoffe) of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the head of the Institute for Physical Chemistry. 1963 he retired in Freiburg.
1964 he became member of the Leopoldina. 1965 he received the Bunsen medal.
He was co-author of the Handbuch der Physik by Geiger and Scheel. His article Vorlesungstechnik with Anton Lambertz of the first volume was also published as a book. He was one of the organisers of the Conferences of nobel laureates in Lindau.