The following is a partial list of notable theoretical physicists. Arranged by century of birth, then century of death, then year of birth, then year of death, then alphabetically by surname. For explanation of symbols, see Notes at end of this article.
Ancient times Kaṇāda (6th century BCE or 2nd century BCE) Thales (c. 624 – c. 546 BCE) Pythagoras^* (c. 570 – c. 495 BCE) Democritus° (c. 460 – c. 370 BCE) Aristotle‡ (384–322 BCE) Archimedesº* (c. 287 – c. 212 BCE) Ptolemy (c. 100 – c. 170 AD) Hypatia^ªº (c. 350–370; died 415 AD)
Middle Ages Al Farabi (c.872–c.950) Ibn al-Haytham (c.965–c.1040) Al Beruni (c.973–c.1048) Omar Khayyám (c.1048–c.1131) Bhaskara II (c.1114–c.1185) Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Urdi (c.1200–c.1266) Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274) Jean Buridan (1301–c.1359/62) Nicole Oresme (c.1320/1325–1382) Jamshid al-Kashi (1380–1429) Sigismondo Polcastro (1384–1473) Ulugh Beg (1394–1449)
15th–16th century Giovanni Bianchini (1410–1469) Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Nicolaus Copernicusº (1473–1543)
16th century and 16th–17th centuries Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Galileo Galileiº* (1564–1642) Johannes Keplerº (1571–1630) Benedetto Castelli (1578–1643) René Descartes‡^ (1596–1650) Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598–1647)
17th century Pierre de Fermat (1607–1665) Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647) Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679) Jeremiah Horrocks (1618–1641) Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618–1663) Jacques Rohault (1618–1672) Blaise Pascal^ (1623–1662) Erhard Weigel (1625–1699) Christiaan Huygens^ (1629–1695) Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673)
17th–18th centuries Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703) Christopher Wren (1632–1723) Robert Hooke (1635–1703) Isaac Newton^*º (1642–1727) Gottfried Leibniz^ (1646–1716) John Flamsteed (1646–1719) Edmond Pourchot (1651–1734) Jacob Bernoulli (1655–1705) Edmond Halley (1656–1742) Luigi Guido Grandi (1671–1742) Jakob Hermann (1678–1733) Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan (1678–1771) Nicolaus II Bernoulli (1695–1726) Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782)
18th century Leonhard Euler^ (1707–1783) Vincenzo Riccati (1707–1785) Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) Laura Bassiª* (1711–1778) Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) Johann Samuel König (1712–1757) Alexis Clairaut (1713–1765) Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783)
18th–19th centuries Franz Aepinus (1724–1802) Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) Charles Coulomb (1736–1806) Joseph Lagrange^º (1736–1813) Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) Jurij Vega (1754–1802) John Dalton^ (1766–1844) Joseph Fourier^ (1768–1830) Thomas Young‡* (1773–1829) Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862) Étienne-Louis Malus (1775–1812) André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) Sophie Germain (1776–1831) Carl Friedrich Gauss^ (1777–1855) Louis Poinsot (1777–1859) Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840) Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana (1781–1864) Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846) Claude-Louis Navier (1785–1836) François Arago (1786–1853) Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) Georg Ohm (1789–1854) Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789–1857) Félix Savart (1791–1841) Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti (1791–1863) Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis (1792–1843) George Green^ (1793–1841) Michel Chasles (1793–1880) Gabrio Piola (1794–1850) Gabriel Lamé (1795–1870) Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) Nikolai Brashman (1796–1866) Andreas von Ettingshausen (1796–1878) Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille (1797–1869) Jean-Marie Duhamel (1797–1872) Franz Ernst Neumann (1798–1895) Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron (1799–1864)
19th century Mikhail Ostrogradsky (1801–1862) Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) Viktor Bunyakovsky (1804–1889) William Hamilton^º (1805–1865) Samuel Earnshaw (1805–1888) Julius Weisbach (1806–1871) Athanase Dupré (1808–1869) Joseph Liouville (1809–1882) Auguste Bravais (1811–1863) Osip Ivanovich Somov (1815–1876) Charles-Eugène Delaunay (1816–1872) Jonathan Homer Lane (1819–1880) William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) Pafnuty Chebyshev (1821–1894) Hermann von Helmholtz‡† (1821–1894) Johann Josef Loschmidt (1821–1895) August Krönig (1822–1879) Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) August Davidov (1823–1885) Gustav Kirchhoff (1824–1887) Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) Ludvig Lorenz (1829–1891) James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Johann Bauschinger (1834–1893) Josef Stefan (1835–1893) Eugen von Lommel (1837–1899) Carlo Alberto Castigliano (1847–1884) Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850–1891) Pierre Henri Hugoniot (1851–1887) Heinrich Hertz* (1857–1894)
19th–20th centuries
20th century
20th–21st century
Fictional theoretical physicists
Gordon Freeman Eli Vance Isaac Kleiner Rodney McKay Samantha Carterª Larry Fleinhardt Leonardo Vetra Quinn Mallory Maximillian Arturo Nicholas Rush Daniel Faraday Catherine Elizabeth Halsey Milo Rambaldi Reed Richards Victor Von Doom Radek Zelenka Sheldon Cooper Rosalind and Robert Lutece Rick Sanchez
See also List of scientists List of physicists
Notes * Experimentalist also º Astronomer, astrophysicist or cosmologist also ^ Developed new mathematics † Contributed to chemistry ‡ Contributed to biology ª Women in theoretical physics