List of Jewish scientists and philosophers
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This is a list of Jewish scientists and philosophers by country. For more detailed lists, see the links provided. This list includes people of Jewish faith or Jewish ancestry.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Contents |
[edit] Austria
- Martin Buber, philosopher
- Erwin Chargaff, chemist, DNA pioneer
- Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis (Atheist by practice)
- Nachman Krochmal, philosopher
- Robert von Lieben, physicist (Jewish father)
- Lise Meitner, physicist: nuclear fission
- Ludwig von Mises, economist
- Wolfgang Pauli, physicist, Nobel Prize (1945) (one non-Jewish grandparent)
- Karl Popper, leading twentieth century philosopher of science (converted to Lutheranism)
- Otto Weininger, philosopher
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (one non-Jewish grandparent; parents converted to Christianity)
[edit] France
- Henri Bergson, philosopher, Nobel Prize (1927)
- Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, physicist, Nobel Prize (1997)
- Émile Durkheim, sociologist
- Francois Jacob, molecular biologist, Nobel Prize (1965)
- Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropologist
- Benoît Mandelbrot, mathematician, fractal geometry
- Henri Moissan, chemist, Nobel Prize (1906) (Jewish mother)
- Laurent Schwartz, mathematician, Fields Medal (1950)
- André Weil, mathematician, Wolf Prize (1979), Steele Prize (1980)
- Jacques Derrida, Philosopher & Literary Critic
- Emmanuel Levinas, Philosopher
[edit] Germany
- Hannah Arendt, philosopher
- Walter Benjamin, philosopher
- Hans Bethe, nuclear physics, Nobel Prize (1967) (Jewish mother)
- Max Born, quantum mechanics pioneer, Nobel Prize (1954)
- Georg Cantor, set theory (father Jewish by birth, mother Catholic by birth; both Lutheran by practice)
- Albert Einstein, greatest scientist of 20th century, theoretical physics, Nobel Prize (1921)
- Paul Ehrlich, developed magic bullet concept, Nobel Prize (1908)
- Erich Fromm, psychologist and humanistic philosopher
- Alexander Grothendieck, algebraic geometry, Fields Medal (1966) (Jewish father; mother also Jewish according to some sources [2])
- Heinrich Hertz, electromagnetic radiation pioneer (Jewish father)
- Edmund Husserl, philosopher, founder of phenomenology
- Edmund (Yehezkel) Landau, number theory.
- Karl Marx, philosopher, economist (parents converted to Lutheranism)
- Albert Michelson, measured speed of light, Nobel Prize (1907)
- Hermann Minkowski, geometrical theory of numbers
- Erich Neumann, psychologist
- Franz Rosenzweig, philosopher
- Karl Schwarzschild, physicist and astronomer
- Otto Selz, cognitive psychologist
[edit] Great Britain
- Sir Alfred Ayer, philosopher, major figure in logical positivism, (Jewish mother)
- Lord Peter Bauer, international development economist (Catholic by religion)
- Sir Isaiah Berlin, political philosopher, historian of ideas
- Sir Hermann Bondi, cosmologist, co-developer of steady-state theory
- Sydney Brenner, molecular biologist, Nobel Prize (2002)
- Selig Brodetsky, mathematician and Jewish communal leader
- Sir Ernst Chain, biochemist, penicillin co-developer, Nobel Prize (1945)
- Sir Michael Epstein, biologist
- Ernest Gellner, philosopher, social-scientist
- Rosalind Franklin, molecular biologist, DNA pioneer
- H. L. A. Hart, philosopher of law
- Brian David Josephson, Nobel Prize
- Lord Richard Kahn, economist, multiplier theory
- Lord Nicholas Kaldor, economist
- Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, biochemist, Krebs cycle, Nobel Prize (1953)
- Harold Kroto, biologist Nobel Prize (Jewish father)
- Max Newman, mathematician and computer pioneer, Colossus (Jewish father)
- Leslie Orgel, chemist
- Sir Rudolf Peierls, physicist, theory of hole carriers in semiconductors, Enrico Fermi Award (1980) (this source says his mother was Roman Catholic[1] but discussions on Talk:Rudolf Peierls cast doubt on this)
- Sir Max Perutz, chemist and molecular biologist, Nobel Prize (1962)
- Sir Karl Popper, leading twentieth century philosopher of science
- David Ricardo, greatest classical economist after Adam Smith (converted to Unitarianism)
- James Joseph Sylvester, mathematician, major contributor to matrix theory
[edit] Hungary
- Paul Erdős, mathematician
- Theodore von Kármán, aeronautical engineer
- Georg Lukács, Marxist philosopher
- John von Neumann, computer scientist, mathematician (converted to Catholicism)
- Michael Polanyi, polymath
- Leó Szilárd, physicist
- Edward Teller, physicist, father of hydrogen bomb
- Eugene Wigner, physicist; Nobel Prize (1963) (parents converted to Lutheranism)
[edit] Israel
- Israel Aharoni, zoologist
- Dorit Aharonov, computer scientist, quantum computing
- Yakir Aharonov, physicist, quantum physics
- Noga Alon, mathematician
- Ruth Arnon, biochemist; Wolf prize (1998)
- Robert Aumann, mathematician, game theory; Nobel prize (2005)
- Jacob Bekenstein, physicist, gravity
- Eli Biham, computer scientist, cryptography
- Aaron Ciechanover, biologists; Nobel Prize (2004)
- Irun Cohen, immunologist
- Shlomi Dolev, computer scientist, distributed computing
- Shimon Even, computer scientist
- Oded Goldreich, computer scientist, cryptography
- Avram Hershko, biologist; Nobel Prize (2004)
- Ephraim Katzir, biophysicist, 4th president of Israel
- Abraham Lempel, computer scientist, data compression
- Yuval Ne'eman, physicist, particle physics
- Amos Ori, physicist, gravity
- Asher Peres, physicist, foundations of quantum mechanics
- Amir Pnueli, computer scientist; Turing award (1996)
- Nathan Rosen, physicist, Founder of the Technion - Israel institute of technology
- Leo Sachs, molecular biologist, immunology
- Adi Shamir, computer scientist, cryptography; coinventor of RSA
- Ehud Shapiro, computer scientist,
- Yair Sprinzak, chemist, organic chemistry, Israeli politician
- Reshef Tenne, chemist, material research and nanotechnology
- Lev Vaidman, physicist, quantum physics
- Chaim Weizmann, chemist, 1st president of Israel
- Jacob Ziv, computer scientist, data compression
[edit] Poland
- Solomon Asch, Gestalt psychologist
- Benoît Mandelbrot, mathematician: fractals
- Albert Sabin, inventor of the oral Polio vaccine
- Alfred Tarski, logician and mathematician (atheistic Catholic convert)
- Stanislaw Ulam, mathematician, Manhattan Project
[edit] Russia/Ukraine
- Vladimir Drinfeld, mathematician, Fields Medal (1990)
- Israel Gelfand, mathematician, Wolf Prize (1978), Kyoto Prize (1989), Steele Prize (2005)
- Vitaly Ginzburg, physicist, Nobel Prize (2003)
- Waldemar Haffkine, biologist, vaccines against cholera and plague
- Lev Landau, physicist, many contributions to theoretical physics, Nobel Prize (1962)
- Phoebus Levene, nucleic acid pioneer
- Wassily Leontief, economist, Nobel Prize (1973) (Jewish mother)
- Grigori Perelman, mathematician, Fields Medal (2006) (declined award)
- Ilya Prigogine, mathematician, Nobel Prize (1979) in chemistry
- Selman Waksman, biochemist, discoverer of streptomycin, Nobel Prize (1952)
- Yakov Zeldovich, cosmologist
- Efim Zelmanov, mathematician, Fields Medal (1994)
[edit] Scandinavia/Benelux
- Niels Bohr, physicist (Jewish mother)
- Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (excommunicated)
[edit] Australia/Canada
- Gustav Nossal, immunologist (Jewish father)
- Steven Pinker, pioneer of evolutionary psychology
- John Polanyi, chemist, Nobel Prize (1986) (Jewish father)
- Peter Singer, philosopher
[edit] United States
- See Jewish-American Academics
- See Jewish-American Scientists
- M. A. Benjaminson, microbiologist, biotechnologist, pioneer in field of in vitro meat technology
- Emile Berliner, inventor of gramophone
- Franz Boas, founder of American Anthropology
- David Bohm, quantum physics pioneer and theoretical physicist, philosopher of science
- Noam Chomsky, linguist and political activist
- Jesse Douglas, mathematician, Fields Medal (1936)
- Richard Epstein, classical liberal economist from the University of Chicago
- Richard Feynman, quantum physicist, co-founder of quantum electrodynamics Nobel Prize (1965)
- Milton Friedman, monetarist economist, Clark Medal (1951), Nobel Prize (1976)
- Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of quarks, Nobel Prize
- John Kemeny, computer scientist, co-founder of BASIC
- Edwin Land, inventor of polaroid
- John McCarthy, artificial intelligence pioneer (Jewish mother)
- Theodore Maiman, inventor of first laser
- Daniel Nathans, discoverer of restriction enzymes
- Robert Nozick, philosopher of libertarianism and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University
- Robert Oppenheimer, nuclear physicist, nuclear bomb, Manhattan Project
- Gregory Pincus, inventor of the Pill
- Ayn Rand, originator of Objectivism (atheist)
- Murray Rothbard, anarcho-capitialist economist
- Carl Sagan, astronomer and science popularizer, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
- Jonas Salk, polio vaccine
- Leo Strauss, political philosopher
- Norbert Wiener, founder of cybernetics
- Edward Witten, M-theory, Fields Medal (1990)
[edit] See also
- List of Jews
- Jewish Scientists
- List of Jewish Nobel Prize winners
- List of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society (mostly British)
- List of Members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- JInfo.org, a comprehensive set of lists of Jewish contributions to world civilization. Fuller (copyrighted) lists can be found there.