Famous Polish Physicists

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was a scientific instrument maker, inventor, and physicist. One of the most prominent and influential personalities of the Dutch Golden Age of science and technology, Fahrenheit is credited with many important inventions, including the mercury-in-glass thermometer and Fahrenheit scale. His inventions helped shape the history of thermometry. 

Joseph Rotblat was a physicist remembered for his work on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He left the laboratory on grounds of conscience and his work on nuclear fallout played a key role in the events preceding the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 1995, Joseph Rotblat won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Georges Charpak was a physicist whose invention and development of the multiwire proportional chamber earned him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992. He is also credited with co-founding several companies, including SuperSonic Imagine and Molecular Engines Laboratories. Over the course of his illustrious career, Georges Charpak was also honored with other awards, such as the Golden Plate Award.

Nobel Prize-winning German physicist Klaus von Klitzing is best known for his revolutionary discovery of the integer quantum Hall effect. With his work, he developed the path for precise measurement of electrical resistance and inspired further research on the conducting properties of electronic components. The von Klitzing constant was named in his honor.

Ewald Georg von Kleist was an 18th-century German jurist and physicist. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig and the University of Leyden. He served as the dean of the cathedral at Kamień Pomorski in the Kingdom of Prussia for over two decades, after which he was appointed the president of the royal court of justice in Koszalin.  

Władysław Turowicz was a Polish-Pakistani aviator, aeronautical engineer, and military scientist. After World War II, Turowicz decided to move to Pakistan due to the political situation in Poland. He then played a major role in building the Pakistan Air Force (PAF); his efforts inspired a 2008 documentary film. Władysław Turowicz remains a highly respected figure in Pakistan.

Apart from being a Catholic priest, Michał Heller is also a mathematical cosmologist and a professor. The Templeton Prize-winner was born in Poland, but he later fled with his family to the USSR, to escape the Nazis, and lived in Siberian labor camps. His current research deals with general relativity.

Witelo was a 13th-century Polish friar, theologian, and natural philosopher. He was an important figure in the history of philosophy in Poland. He studied at Padua University. He described the reflection and refraction of light in 1284. His major surviving work on optics, Perspectiva, was based on the work of the polymath Alhazen. Many of his works didn't survive.  

A theoretical physics professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, Hagen Kleinert is known for his over 400 papers on topics such as mathematical physics. The Max Born Prize- winner has made major contributions to path integrals and the theory of strings. He is married to author Annemarie Kleinert.