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100 Notable alumni of California Institute of Technology

Updated: June 23, 2026 EliteDegrees

California Institute of Technology is ranked #71 in the world and #46 in United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from California Institute of Technology sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. Many individuals affiliated with California Institute of Technology won Nobel Prizes for Peace, in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Economics.

Luke Chia-Liu Yuan

1. Luke Chia-Liu Yuan

1912-2003 (aged 91)
physicist
Luke Chia-Liu Yuan was a Chinese-American physicist. He was the husband of the famous physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, who disproved the conservation of parity.
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Trinh Xuan Thuan

2. Trinh Xuan Thuan

1948-. (aged 78)
astrophysicist writer university teacher
Trịnh Xuân Thuận is a Vietnamese-American astrophysicist.
Virgil Griffith

3. Virgil Griffith

1983-. (aged 43)
computer scientist programmer
Virgil Griffith is an American programmer. He worked extensively on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, designed the Tor2web proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScanner. He has published papers on artificial life and integrated information theory. Griffith was arrested in 2019 and in 2021 pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. laws relating to money laundering...
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Huck Seed

4. Huck Seed

1969-. (aged 57)
poker player
Huckleberry ''Huck'' Seed is an American professional poker player best known for winning the Main Event of the 1996 World Series of Poker.
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George Zweig

5. George Zweig

1937-. (aged 89)
neuroscientist neurobiologist physicist
George Zweig is an American physicist of Russian-Jewish origin. He was trained as a particle physicist under Richard Feynman. He introduced, independently of Murray Gell-Mann, the quark model (although he named it "aces"). He later turned his attention to neurobiology. He has worked as a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in the...
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Rudolph A. Marcus

6. Rudolph A. Marcus

1923-. (aged 103)
university teacher chemist
Rudolph Arthur Marcus is a Canadian-born American chemist who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems". Marcus theory, named after him, provides a thermodynamic and kinetic framework for describing one electron outer-sphere electron transfer. He is a professor at Caltech, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a member...
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Alan Lightman

7. Alan Lightman

1948-. (aged 78)
novelist writer physicist astrophysicist science fiction writer
Alan Paige Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT.
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William Alfred Fowler

8. William Alfred Fowler

1911-1995 (aged 84)
astronomer university teacher physicist astrophysicist nuclear physicist
William Alfred Fowler was an American astrophysicist. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe." He is known for his theoretical and experimental research into nuclear reactions within stars and the energy elements produced in the process. With...
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Edwin McMillan

9. Edwin McMillan

1907-1991 (aged 84)
physicist university teacher
Edwin Mattison McMillan was an American physicist credited with being the first to produce a transuranium element, neptunium. For this, he shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seaborg.
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George M. Whitesides

10. George M. Whitesides

1939-. (aged 87)
university teacher chemist
George McClelland Whitesides is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly, soft lithography, microfabrication, microfluidics, and nanotechnology. A prolific author and patent holder who has received many awards, he received the highest Hirsch index rating of all living...
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Eric Betzig

11. Eric Betzig

1960-. (aged 66)
physicist chemist
Robert Eric Betzig is an American physicist who works as a professor of physics and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a senior fellow at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.
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Aza Raskin

12. Aza Raskin

1984-. (aged 42)
computer scientist entrepreneur
Aza Raskin is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and of the Earth Species Project. He is also a writer, entrepreneur, inventor, and interface designer. He is the son of Jef Raskin, a human–computer interface expert known for the Macintosh project at Apple.
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Cleve Moler

13. Cleve Moler

1939-. (aged 87)
university teacher computer scientist mathematician engineer programmer
Cleve Barry Moler is an American mathematician and computer programmer specializing in numerical analysis. In the mid to late 1970s, he was one of the authors of LINPACK and EISPACK, Fortran libraries for numerical computing. He created MATLAB, a numerical computing package, to give his students at the University of New Mexico easy access to these libraries without writing Fortran....
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Joseph Polchinski

14. Joseph Polchinski

1954-2018 (aged 64)
university teacher theoretical physicist physicist
Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr. was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist.
David J. C. MacKay

15. David J. C. MacKay

1967-2016 (aged 49)
university teacher physicist computer scientist mathematician professor
Sir David John Cameron MacKay was a British physicist, mathematician, and academic. He was the Regius Professor of Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and from 2009 to 2014 was Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). MacKay wrote the book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air.
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Robert Tarjan

16. Robert Tarjan

1948-. (aged 78)
computer scientist mathematician university teacher
Robert Endre Tarjan is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is the discoverer of several graph theory algorithms, including his strongly connected components algorithm, and co-inventor of both splay trees and Fibonacci heaps. Tarjan is currently the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He and John Hopcroft won the 1986 ACM Turing Award.
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Bernard Carr

17. Bernard Carr

1949-. (aged 77)
physicist
Bernard J. Carr is a British professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London.
Robert H. Grubbs

18. Robert H. Grubbs

1942-2021 (aged 79)
university teacher chemist autobiographer
Robert Howard Grubbs ForMemRS was an American chemist and the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He was a co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on olefin metathesis.
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Po-Shen Loh

19. Po-Shen Loh

1982-. (aged 44)
mathematician
Po-Shen Loh is an American mathematician specializing in combinatorics. Loh teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, and from 2014 to 2023 served as the national coach of the United States' International Mathematical Olympiad team. He is the founder of educational websites Expii and Live, and lead developer of contact-tracing app NOVID.
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Robin Hanson

20. Robin Hanson

1959-. (aged 67)
university teacher economist social scientist
Robin Dale Hanson is an American economist and author. He is associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a former research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. Hanson is known for his work on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute's Foresight Exchange and DARPA's FutureMAP...
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Garrett Reisman

21. Garrett Reisman

1968-. (aged 58)
engineer entrepreneur astronaut
Garrett Erin Reisman is an American engineer and former NASA astronaut. He was a backup crew member for Expedition 15 and joined Expedition 16 aboard the International Space Station for a short time before becoming a member of Expedition 17. He returned to Earth on June 14, 2008 on board STS-124 on Space Shuttle Discovery. He was a member of...
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Steven E. Koonin

22. Steven E. Koonin

1951-. (aged 75)
university teacher politician physicist
Steven Elliot Koonin is an American theoretical physicist, environmental scientist, and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief...
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Amy Mainzer

23. Amy Mainzer

1974-. (aged 52)
astrophysicist astronomer
Amy Mainzer is an American astronomer, specializing in astrophysical instrumentation and infrared astronomy. She was the deputy project scientist for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and is the principal investigator for its NEOWISE extension to study minor planets and for the future Near Earth Object Surveyor space telescope mission.
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Eugene Parker

24. Eugene Parker

1927-2022 (aged 95)
astrophysicist astronomer physicist university teacher
Eugene Newman Parker was an American solar and plasma physicist, often called the "father" and "founder" of heliophysics. In 1958, he proposed the existence of the solar wind and predicted that the magnetic field in the outer Solar System would be in the shape of a Parker spiral—predictions initially rejected by reviewers and scientific community, but quickly confirmed by the...
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Martin Karplus

25. Martin Karplus

1930-2024 (aged 94)
theoretical chemist university teacher biophysicist chemist scientist
Martin Karplus was an Austrian and American theoretical chemist. He was the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He was also the director of the Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Strasbourg, France. Karplus received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt...
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Mark Adler

26. Mark Adler

1959-. (aged 67)
computer scientist mathematician physicist
Mark Adler is an American software engineer. He is best known for his work in the field of data compression as the author of the Adler-32 checksum function, and a co-author, together with Jean-loup Gailly, of the zlib compression library and gzip. He has contributed to Info-ZIP, and has participated in developing the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format. Adler...
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Michael S. Gazzaniga

27. Michael S. Gazzaniga

1939-. (aged 87)
writer university teacher neuroscientist psychologist neurologist
Michael Saunders Gazzaniga is an American cognitive neuroscientist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the founder and retired director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at UCSB (2006–2023).
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Serge Lang

28. Serge Lang

1927-2005 (aged 78)
mathematician university teacher
Serge Lang was a French-American mathematician and activist who taught at Yale University for most of his career. He is known for his work in number theory and for his mathematics textbooks, including the influential Algebra. He received the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in 1960 and was a member of the Bourbaki group.
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Todd Strasser

29. Todd Strasser

1950-. (aged 76)
novelist science fiction writer writer journalist children's writer
Todd Strasser is an American writer of more than 140 young-adult and middle grade novels and many short stories and works of non-fiction, some written under the pen names Morton Rhue and T.S. Rue.
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Stanislav Smirnov

30. Stanislav Smirnov

1970-. (aged 56)
university teacher researcher mathematician
Stanislav Konstantinovich Smirnov is a Russian mathematician currently working as a professor at the University of Geneva. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010. His research involves complex analysis, dynamical systems and probability theory.
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Barry C. Barish

31. Barry C. Barish

1936-. (aged 90)
astrophysicist physicist university teacher experimental physicist
Barry Clark Barish is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Laureate. He is a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at California Institute of Technology and a leading expert on gravitational waves.
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John S. Chen

32. John S. Chen

1955-. (aged 71)
businessperson chief executive officer
John S. Chen is a Hong Kong-American businessman who served as executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, a software vendor specializing in data management, analytics and mobility technology.
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Moshe Arens

33. Moshe Arens

1925-2019 (aged 94)
entrepreneur diplomat scientist military flight engineer opinion journalist
Moshe Arens was an Israeli aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat, and Likud politician. A member of the Knesset between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and was a professor at the Technion in...
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Carl David Anderson

34. Carl David Anderson

1905-1991 (aged 86)
physicist university teacher
Carl David Anderson was an American experimental physicist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics with Victor Hess for his discovery of the positron, which confirmed the existence of antimatter.
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Peter Shor

35. Peter Shor

1959-. (aged 67)
computer scientist mathematician university teacher
Peter Williston Shor is an American theoretical computer scientist known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially faster than the best currently-known algorithm running on a classical computer. He has been a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2003.
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Charles Francis Richter

36. Charles Francis Richter

1900-1985 (aged 85)
geologist mathematician seismologist
Charles Francis Richter was an American seismologist and physicist. He is the namesake and one of the creators of the Richter scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, was widely used to quantify the size of earthquakes. Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935...
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David Ho

37. David Ho

1952-. (aged 74)
physician virologist
David Da-i Ho is a Taiwanese-American physician-scientist and virologist known for his contributions in HIV/AIDS research. He pioneered the use of combination anti-retroviral therapy instead of single therapy in the treatment of HIV infection which transformed HIV from an absolute terminal disease into a chronic disease.
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Robert C. Merton

38. Robert C. Merton

1944-. (aged 82)
university teacher economist
Robert Cox Merton is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, particularly the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model.
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David Brin

39. David Brin

1950-. (aged 76)
novelist science fiction writer physicist astrophysicist screenwriter
Glen David Brin is an American science fiction author. He has won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His novel The Postman was adapted into a 1997 feature film starring Kevin Costner.
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Pierre Clostermann

40. Pierre Clostermann

1921-2006 (aged 85)
writer French resistance fighter military personnel engineer aircraft pilot
Pierre-Henri Clostermann DSO, DFC & Bar was a World War II French ace fighter pilot.
John Clauser

41. John Clauser

1942-. (aged 84)
physicist
John Francis Clauser is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality. Clauser was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science". In 2023, he declared...
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Andrea M. Ghez

42. Andrea M. Ghez

1965-. (aged 61)
mathematician astronomer scientist university teacher
Andrea Mia Ghez is an American astrophysicist. She shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics with Reinhard Genzel "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy". This object is generally recognized to be a black hole.
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Herman Kahn

43. Herman Kahn

1922-1983 (aged 61)
futurist mathematician lobbyist
Herman Kahn was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theorist while employed at the RAND Corporation. He analyzed the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommended ways to improve...
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Eugene Merle Shoemaker

44. Eugene Merle Shoemaker

1928-1997 (aged 69)
geologist astronomer
Eugene Merle Shoemaker was an American geologist. He co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televised around the world. Shoemaker also studied terrestrial craters, such as Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, and along with Edward Chao provided the first conclusive evidence of its...
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Adam D'Angelo

45. Adam D'Angelo

1984-. (aged 42)
businessperson
Adam D'Angelo is an American internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Quora, based in Mountain View, California, and as the first chief technology officer of Facebook (now Meta).
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Frances Arnold

46. Frances Arnold

1956-. (aged 70)
engineer inventor biochemist university teacher
Frances Hamilton Arnold is an American chemical engineer and Nobel Laureate. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering the use of directed evolution to engineer enzymes.
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Stephen Wolfram

47. Stephen Wolfram

1959-. (aged 67)
university teacher podcaster physicist opinion journalist mathematician
Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
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Fei-Fei Li

48. Fei-Fei Li

1976-. (aged 50)
computer scientist scientist university teacher
Fei-Fei Li is a Chinese-born American computer scientist best known for establishing ImageNet, the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s. She is a professor of computer science at Stanford University, with research expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and cognitive neuroscience.
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Harry Turtledove

49. Harry Turtledove

1949-. (aged 77)
historian science fiction writer novelist writer
Harry Norman Turtledove is an American historian and author who is best known for his work in the genres of alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery fiction. He lives in Southern California.
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Hal Finney

50. Hal Finney

1956-2014 (aged 58)
computer scientist programmer cryptographer
Harold Thomas Finney II was an American software developer. In his early career, he was credited as lead developer on several console games. He later worked for PGP Corporation. He was an early Bitcoin contributor, and received the first Bitcoin transaction from the currency's creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
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Frank Capra

51. Frank Capra

1897-1991 (aged 94)
film director writer producer film screenwriter screenwriter
Frank Russell Capra was an Italian-born American film director, producer, and screenwriter who was the creative force behind several major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified".
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Charlie Munger

52. Charlie Munger

1924-2023 (aged 99)
investor
Charles Thomas Munger was an American businessman, investor, attorney and philanthropist. He was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett, from 1978 until his death in 2023. Buffett described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man, and credited him with being the "architect" of modern Berkshire Hathaway's business philosophy.
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Alexei Filippenko

53. Alexei Filippenko

1958-. (aged 68)
astrophysicist astronomer physicist university teacher
Alexei Vladimir "Alex" Filippenko is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko graduated from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1984, where he...
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Konstantin Batygin

54. Konstantin Batygin

1986-. (aged 40)
astronomer university teacher astrophysicist planetary scientist science communicator
Konstantin Batygin is an American astronomer and Professor of Planetary Sciences at Caltech.
Gordon Moore

55. Gordon Moore

1929-2023 (aged 94)
philanthropist physicist entrepreneur engineer chemist
Gordon Earle Moore was an American businessman, scientist, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.
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Pete McCloskey

56. Pete McCloskey

1927-2024 (aged 97)
lawyer military officer non-fiction writer politician
Paul Norton "Pete" McCloskey Jr. was an American politician who represented San Mateo County, California, as a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1983.
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Jay Obernolte

57. Jay Obernolte

1970-. (aged 56)
entrepreneur politician
Jay Phillip Obernolte is an American politician and businessman serving as the U.S. representative for California's 23rd district since 2021, when it was numbered as the 8th district. A Republican, he was previously a member of the California State Assembly representing the 33rd district. Before serving in the Assembly, Obernolte served on the city council and was the mayor of...
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Thomas Hunt Morgan

58. Thomas Hunt Morgan

1866-1945 (aged 79)
biologist evolutionary biologist physiologist university teacher zoologist
Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role that the chromosome plays in heredity.
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Frank Oppenheimer

59. Frank Oppenheimer

1912-1985 (aged 73)
physicist teacher husbandry worker nuclear physicist
Frank Friedman Oppenheimer was an American particle physicist, cattle rancher, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, and the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
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Murray Gell-Mann

60. Murray Gell-Mann

1929-2019 (aged 90)
theoretical physicist physicist non-fiction writer
Murray Gell-Mann was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the fundamental building blocks of the strongly interacting particles, and the renormalization group as a foundational element of quantum field theory and statistical mechanics. Murray Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize in...
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William Shockley

61. William Shockley

1910-1989 (aged 79)
university teacher inventor physicist
William Bradford Shockley was an American solid-state physicist. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect."
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Michael Rosbash

62. Michael Rosbash

1944-. (aged 82)
geneticist university teacher
Michael Morris Rosbash is an American geneticist and chronobiologist. Rosbash is a professor and researcher at Brandeis University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Rosbash's research group cloned the Drosophila period gene in 1984 and proposed the Transcription Translation Negative Feedback Loop for circadian clocks in 1990. In 1998, they discovered the cycle gene, clock gene, and cryptochrome...
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Nergis Mavalvala

63. Nergis Mavalvala

1968-. (aged 58)
astrophysicist quantum physicist physicist
Nergis Mavalvala is a Pakistani-American astrophysicist. She is the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the dean of the university's school of science. She was previously the Associate Head of the university's Department of Physics. Mavalvala is best known for her work on the detection of gravitational waves...
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Seth Neddermeyer

64. Seth Neddermeyer

1907-1988 (aged 81)
scientist university teacher physicist researcher nuclear physicist
Seth Henry Neddermeyer was an American physicist who co-discovered the muon, and later championed the implosion-type nuclear weapon while working on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
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Robert L. Behnken

65. Robert L. Behnken

1970-. (aged 56)
military officer engineer astronaut
Robert Louis Behnken is an American engineer, a former NASA astronaut, and former Chief of the Astronaut Office.
Don Page

66. Don Page

1948-. (aged 78)
physicist
Don Nelson Page FRSC is an American-born Canadian theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta, Canada.
George Beadle

67. George Beadle

1903-1989 (aged 86)
geneticist university teacher
George Wells Beadle was an American geneticist. In 1958 he shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum for their discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells. He served as the 7th president of the University of Chicago from 1961 to 1968.
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Kip S. Thorne

68. Kip S. Thorne

1940-. (aged 86)
university teacher writer physicist astrophysicist astronomer
Kip Stephen Thorne is an American astrophysicist and author. He shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".
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Richard Feynman

69. Richard Feynman

1918-1988 (aged 70)
university teacher science communicator physicist quantum physicist writer
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". He is also known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of the physics of...
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L. Sprague de Camp

70. L. Sprague de Camp

1907-2000 (aged 93)
literary critic journalist military officer writer historian
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.
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Carolyn Porco

71. Carolyn Porco

1953-. (aged 73)
astronomer photographer planetary scientist
Carolyn C. Porco is an American planetary scientist who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She led the imaging science team on the Cassini mission in orbit around Saturn. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus.
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Frank Borman

72. Frank Borman

1928-2023 (aged 95)
test pilot military flight engineer autobiographer aircraft pilot astronaut
Frank Frederick Borman II was an American United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, test pilot, and businessman. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, and together with crewmates Jim Lovell and William Anders, became the first of 24 humans to do so, for which he was awarded the...
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Donald Knuth

73. Donald Knuth

1938-. (aged 88)
academic university teacher mathematician engineer writer
Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer science. Knuth has been called the "father of the analysis of algorithms".
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Roger Sperry

74. Roger Sperry

1913-1994 (aged 81)
university teacher neurologist psychologist physiologist physician
Roger Wolcott Sperry was an American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist, cognitive neuroscientist, and Nobel laureate who, together with David H. Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with split-brain research. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Sperry as the 44th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
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Robert A. Millikan

75. Robert A. Millikan

1868-1953 (aged 85)
physicist university teacher
Robert Andrews Millikan was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."
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Linus Pauling

76. Linus Pauling

1901-1994 (aged 93)
physicist university teacher biochemist crystallographer peace activist
Linus Carl Pauling FRS was an American chemist and peace activist. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was...
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John C. Lilly

77. John C. Lilly

1915-2001 (aged 86)
psychiatrist psychotherapist cetologist pseudoscientist neuroscientist
John Cunningham Lilly was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer, and inventor. He was a member of a group of counterculture thinkers that included Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, and Werner Erhard, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home. He often stirred controversy, especially among mainstream scientists.
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Ivan Sutherland

78. Ivan Sutherland

1938-. (aged 88)
university teacher computer scientist engineer inventor programmer
Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject at the University of Utah in the 1970s was pioneering in the field. Sutherland, Evans, and their students from that era developed several...
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Howard Temin

79. Howard Temin

1934-1994 (aged 60)
virologist university teacher geneticist biochemist physician
Howard Martin Temin was an American geneticist and virologist. He discovered reverse transcriptase in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for which he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore.
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John McCarthy

80. John McCarthy

1927-2011 (aged 84)
university teacher artificial intelligence researcher computer scientist mathematician engineer
John Joseph McCarthy III is an American professional soccer player who plays as a goalkeeper for Major League Soccer club New York Red Bulls.
Charles Hard Townes

81. Charles Hard Townes

1915-2015 (aged 100)
inventor physicist university teacher nuclear physicist
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,...
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Robert Wilson

82. Robert Wilson

1936-. (aged 90)
researcher astronomer physicist
Robert Woodrow Wilson is an American astronomer who shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arno Penzias "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation".
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Howard Hughes

83. Howard Hughes

1905-1976 (aged 71)
film producer entrepreneur military flight engineer aircraft pilot inventor
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was an American aviator, aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, and investor. He was one of the richest and most influential people in the world during his lifetime. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior...
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Arati Prabhakar

84. Arati Prabhakar

1959-. (aged 67)
physicist engineer
Arati Prabhakar is an American engineer and public official. From October 3, 2022 to January 20, 2025, she served as the 12th director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Science and Technology Advisor to the President, which is called Science Advisor to the President. in other administrations. She also served in the President's cabinet.
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Vernon L. Smith

85. Vernon L. Smith

1927-. (aged 99)
university teacher economist
Vernon Lomax Smith is an American economist who is currently a professor of economics and law at Chapman University. He was formerly the McLellan/Regent's Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, a professor of economics and law at George Mason University, and a board member of the Mercatus Center. Along with Daniel Kahneman, Smith won the 2002 Nobel Memorial...
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Sidney Gottlieb

86. Sidney Gottlieb

1918-1999 (aged 81)
biochemist chemist
Sidney Gottlieb was an American chemist and spymaster who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's 1950s and 1960s assassination attempts and mind-control program, known as Project MKUltra.
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Arthur B. McDonald

87. Arthur B. McDonald

1943-. (aged 83)
astrophysicist university teacher physicist
Arthur Bruce McDonald CC OOnt ONS FRS FRSC P.Eng is a Canadian astrophysicist. McDonald is the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration and held the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 2006 to 2013. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita.
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Rob Pike

88. Rob Pike

1956-. (aged 70)
computer scientist engineer programmer writer
Robert Pike is a Canadian programmer and author. He is best known for his work on the Go programming language while working at Google and the Plan 9 operating system while working at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team.
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Satish Dhawan

89. Satish Dhawan

1920-2002 (aged 82)
military flight engineer
Satish Dhawan was an Indian mathematician and aerospace engineer. He served as the chairman of ISRO from 1972 to 1984 and is often regarded as the father of experimental fluid dynamics research in India.
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Ardem Patapoutian

90. Ardem Patapoutian

1967-. (aged 59)
neuroscientist molecular biologist
Ardem Patapoutian is a Lebanese-American molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate of Armenian descent. He is known for his work in characterizing the PIEZO1, PIEZO2, and TRPM8 receptors that detect pressure, menthol, and temperature. Patapoutian is a neuroscience professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. In 2021, he won the Nobel Prize...
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Sabeer Bhatia

91. Sabeer Bhatia

1968-. (aged 58)
entrepreneur businessperson
Sabeer Bhatia is an Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded the first free web-based email service, Hotmail.com (now Outlook.com) in 1996. In 2021 he co-founded ShowReel with Javed Yunus. ShowReel initially hosted short videos for job seekers and founders. It has since turned into an AI-based entrepreneurship course.
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Erdal İnönü

92. Erdal İnönü

1926-2007 (aged 81)
physicist diplomat university teacher politician
Erdal İnönü was a Turkish theoretical physicist and politician who served as the interim prime minister of Turkey between 16 May and 25 June 1993. He also served as the deputy prime minister of Turkey from 1991 to 1993 and as the minister of foreign affairs from March to October 1995. He served as the leader of the Social Democracy...
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Qian Xuesen

93. Qian Xuesen

1911-2009 (aged 98)
university teacher engineer astronautical engineer
Qian Xuesen was a Chinese aerospace engineer and cyberneticist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics. He achieved recognition as one of America's leading experts in rockets and high-speed flight theory prior to his deportation to China in 1955.
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David Bohm

94. David Bohm

1917-1992 (aged 75)
physicist philosopher university teacher nuclear physicist
David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind. Among his many contributions to physics is his causal and deterministic interpretation of quantum theory known as De Broglie–Bohm theory.
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Harrison Schmitt

95. Harrison Schmitt

1935-. (aged 91)
scientist university teacher politician geologist astronaut
Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt is an American geologist, former NASA astronaut, university professor, and former U.S. senator from New Mexico. He is the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation—to have walked on the Moon.
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Max Delbrück

96. Max Delbrück

1906-1981 (aged 75)
physicist biophysicist university teacher virologist molecular biologist
Max Emil Julius Delbrück was a German agricultural chemist.
Rudolf Mössbauer

97. Rudolf Mössbauer

1929-2011 (aged 82)
university teacher nuclear physicist physicist
Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer was a German physicist who shared the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics with Robert Hofstadter for his discovery of the Mössbauer effect, which is the basis for Mössbauer spectroscopy.
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Benoit Mandelbrot

98. Benoit Mandelbrot

1924-2010 (aged 86)
economist scientist university teacher mathematician writer
Benoit B. Mandelbrot was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the uncontrolled element in life". He referred to himself as a "fractalist" and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word...
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Barton Zwiebach

99. Barton Zwiebach

1954-. (aged 72)
physicist university teacher
Barton Zwiebach is a Peruvian string theorist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ahmed Zewail

100. Ahmed Zewail

1946-2016 (aged 70)
inventor physicist chemist university teacher
Ahmed Hassan Zewail was an Egyptian and American chemist, known as the "father of femtochemistry". He was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry and became the first Egyptian and Arab to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific field, and also the first African to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was a...
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