List of atheists in science and technology

This is a list of atheists in science and technology. Living persons in this list are people whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life, and who have publicly identified themselves as atheists.

Science and technology

Zhores Alferov

Philip Warren Anderson

Hans Bethe

Niels Bohr

James Chadwick

William Kingdon Clifford

Francis Crick

Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Richard Dawkins

Paul Ehrenfest

Paul Erdős

Hugh Everett III

Richard Feynman

Edmond Halley

Stephen Hawking

Peter Higgs

Lev Landau

Ernst Mach

Andrey Markov

John McCarthy

Marvin Minsky

Gaspard Monge

John Forbes Nash, Jr.

Linus Pauling

Roger Penrose

Derek J. de Solla Price

Bertrand Russell

Oliver Sacks

Meghnad Saha

Andrei Sakharov

Erwin Schrödinger

William Shockley

William James Sidis

Stephen Smale

Richard Stallman

Victor J. Stenger

Alfred Tarski

Kip Thorne

Linus Torvalds

Craig Venter

James Watson

Joseph Weber

Steven Weinberg

Frank Whittle

Eugene Wigner

Oscar Zariski

Konrad Zuse

Fritz Zwicky

• Zhores Alferov (1930–): Belarusian, Soviet and Russian physicist and academic who contributed significantly to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics. He is an inventor of the heterotransistor and the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.^[1][2]
• Jim Al-Khalili OBE (1962–): Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and science communicator. He is professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey^[3]
• Philip W. Anderson (1923–): American physicist. He was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977. Anderson has made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism and high-temperature superconductivity.^[4]
• François Arago (1786–1853): French mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician.^[5]
• Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927): Swedish scientist and the first Swedish Nobel Prize winner.^[6][7]
• Peter Atkins (1940–): English chemist, Professor of chemistry at Lincoln College, Oxford in England.^[8]
• Sir Edward Battersby Bailey FRS (1881–1965): British geologist, director of the British Geological Survey.^[9]
• Sir Patrick Bateson FRS (1938–): English biologist and science writer, Emeritus Professor of ethology at Cambridge University and president of the Zoological Society of London.^[10]
• William Bateson (1861–1926): British geneticist, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, where he eventually became Master. He was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity and biological inheritance, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery.^[11]
• Charles H. Bennett (1943–): American physicist, information theorist and IBM Fellow at IBM Research. He is best known for his work in quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation and is one of the founding fathers of modern quantum information theory.^[12]
• John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971): British biophysicist. Best known for pioneering X-ray crystallography in molecular biology.^[13]
• Paul Bert (1833–1886): French zoologist, physiologist and politician. Known for his research on oxygen toxicity.^[14]
• Marcellin Berthelot (1827–1907): French chemist and politician noted for the Thomsen-Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances and disproved the theory of vitalism.^[15][16]
• Claude Louis Berthollet (1748–1822): French chemist.^[17]
• Hans Bethe (1906–2005): German-American nuclear physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.^[18] A versatile theoretical physicist, Bethe also made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and astrophysics. During World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory which developed the first atomic bombs. There he played a key role in calculating the critical mass of the weapons, and did theoretical work on the implosion method used in both the Trinity test and the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.^[19]
• Norman Bethune (1890–1939): Canadian physician and medical innovator.^[20]
• Patrick Blackett OM, CH, FRS (1897–1974): Nobel Prize–winning English experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers, cosmic rays, and paleomagnetism.^[21]
• Susan Blackmore (1951–): English psychologist and memeticist, best known for her book The Meme Machine.^[22]
• Niels Bohr (1885-1962): Danish physicist. Best known for his foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.^{[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]}
• Sir Hermann Bondi KCB, FRS (1919–2005): Anglo-Austrian mathematician and cosmologist, best known for co-developing the steady-state theory of the universe and important contributions to the theory of general relativity.^[31][32]
• Paul D. Boyer (1918–): American biochemist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1997.^[33]
• Calvin Bridges (1889–1938): American geneticist, known especially for his work on fruit fly genetics.^[34]
• Percy Williams Bridgman (1882–1961): American physicist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures.^[35][36][37]
• Rodney Brooks (1954-): Australian-American computer scientist and roboticist.^[38]
• Ruth Mack Brunswick (1897–1946): American psychologist, a close confidant of and collaborator with Sigmund Freud.^[39]
• Sean M. Carroll (1966–): American cosmologist specializing in dark energy and general relativity.
• James Chadwick (1891–1974): English physicist. He won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron.^[40]
• William Kingdon Clifford FRS (1845–1879): English mathematician and philosopher, co-introducer of geometric algebra, the first to suggest that gravitation might be a manifestation of an underlying geometry, and coiner of the expression "mind-stuff".^[41]
• Frank Close OBE (1945–): British particle physicist, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, known for his lectures and writings making science intelligible to a wider audience, for which he was awarded the Institute of Physics's Kelvin Medal and Prize.^[42]
• Samuel T. Cohen (1921-2010): American physicist who invented the W70 warhead and is generally credited as the father of the neutron bomb.^[43]
• John Horton Conway (1937–): British mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He is best known for the invention of the cellular automaton called Conway's Game of Life.^[44]
• Brian Cox OBE (1968–): English particle physicist, Royal Society University Research Fellow, Professor at the University of Manchester. Best known as a presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC. He also had some fame in the 1990s as the keyboard player for the pop band D:Ream.^[45][46]
• Jerry Coyne (1949–): American professor of biology, known for his books on evolution and commentary on the intelligent design debate.^[47]
• Francis Crick (1916–2004): English molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist; noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.^{[48][49][50][51][52][53][54]}
• George Washington Crile (1864–1943): American surgeon. Crile is now formally recognized as the first surgeon to have succeeded in a direct blood transfusion.^[55]
• Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900-1958): French physicist who, jointly with his wife, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of artificial radioactivity.^[56]
• Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956): French scientist, the daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. .^[57][58]
• Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783): French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie.^[59][60]
• Richard Dawkins (1941–): British zoologist, biologist, creator of the concept of the meme; outspoken atheist and popularizer of science, author of The God Delusion and founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.^[61]
• Jean Baptiste Delambre (1749–1822): French mathematician and astronomer.^[62]
• Arnaud Denjoy (1884–1974): French mathematician, noted for his contributions to harmonic analysis and differential equations.^[63]
• Paul Dirac (1902–1984): British theoretical physicist, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, predicted the existence of antimatter, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.^{[64][65][66][67][68][69]}
• Christian de Duve (1917-2013): Belgian cytologist and biochemist. He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, peroxisome and lysosome, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974 with Albert Claude and George E. Palade ("for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell"). In addition to peroxisome and lysosome, he invented the scientific names such as autophagy, endocytosis, and exocytosis in a single occasion. .^{[70][71][72][73]}
• Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896): German physician and physiologist, the discoverer of nerve action potential, and the father of experimental electrophysiology.^[74]
• Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933): Austrian and Dutch theoretical physicist, who made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem.^[75][76]
• Thomas Eisner (1929–2011): German-American entomologist and ecologist, known as the "father of chemical ecology".^[77]
• Albert Ellis (1913–2007): American psychologist who in 1955 developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.^[78]
• Paul Erdős (1913–1996), Hungarian mathematician. He published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.^[79]
• Richard R. Ernst (1933–): Swiss physical chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991.^[80]
• Hugh Everett III (1930–1982): American physicist who first proposed the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, which he termed his "relative state" formulation.^[81]
• Hans Eysenck (1916-1997): German psychologist and author who is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas. He was the founding editor of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, and authored about 80 books and more than 1600 journal articles.^[82]
• Sandra Faber (1944–): American University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, also working at the Lick Observatory, who headed the team that discovered 'The Great Attractor.^[83]
• Gustav Fechner (1801–1887): German experimental psychologist. An early pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics.^[84]
• Leon Festinger (1919–1989): American social psychologist famous for his Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.^[85]
• Richard Feynman (1918–1988): American theoretical physicist, best known for his work in renormalizing Quantum electrodynamics (QED) and his path integral formulation of quantum mechanics . He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.^[86][87][88]
• James Franck (1882–1964): German physicist. Won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925.^[89]
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): Austrian neurologist and known as Father of psychoanalysis.^[90]
• Erich Fromm (1900–1980): German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.^[91]
• Christer Fuglesang (1957–): Swedish astronaut and physicist.^[92]
• George Gamow (1904–1968): Russian-born theoretical physicist and cosmologist. An early advocate and developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory.^{[93][94][95][96]}
• Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1772–1850): French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for two laws related to gases.^[97]
• Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009): Soviet and Russian theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, Nobel laureate, a member of the Soviet and Russian Academies of Sciences and one of the fathers of Soviet hydrogen bomb.^[98]
• Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield, CBE (1950–): British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords, specialising in the physiology of the brain.^[99]
• Herb Grosch (1918–2010): Canadian-American computer scientist, perhaps best known for Grosch's law, which he formulated in 1950.^[100]
• Alan Guth (1947–): American theoretical physicist and cosmologist.^[101]
• Jacques Hadamard (1865–1963): French mathematician who made major contributions in number theory, complex function theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations.^[102]
• Jonathan Haidt (c.1964–): Associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, focusing on the psychological bases of morality across different cultures, and author of The Happiness Hypothesis.^[103]
• J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964): British polymath well known for his works in physiology, genetics and evolutionary biology. He was also a mathematician making innovative contributions to statistics and biometry education in India. Haldane was also the first to construct human gene maps for haemophilia and colour blindness on the X chromosome and he was one of the first people to conceive abiogenesis.^[104]
• E. T. 'Teddy' Hall (1924–2001): English archaeological scientist, famous for exposing the Piltdown Man fraud and claiming that the Shroud of Turin is a medieval fake.^[105]
• Sir James Hall (1761–1832): Scottish geologist and chemist, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and leading figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.^[106]
• Edmond Halley (1656-1742): English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist and physicist. Best known for computing the orbit of the eponymous Halley's Comet.^[107]
• Beverly Halstead (1933–1991): British paleontologist and populariser of science.^[108]
• Frances Hamerstrom (1908–1998): American author, naturalist and ornithologist known for her work with the greater prairie chicken in Wisconsin, and for her research on birds of prey.^[109]
• W. D. Hamilton (1936–2000): British evolutionary biologist, widely recognised as one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century.^[110]
• G. H. Hardy (1877–1947): a prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis.^[111][112]
• Herbert A. Hauptman (1917–2011): American mathematician. Along with Jerome Karle, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985.^[113]
• Stephen Hawking (1942–): British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.^[114]
• Ewald Hering (1834–1918): German physiologist who did much research into color vision, binocular perception and eye movements. He proposed opponent color theory in 1892.^[115][116]
• Peter Higgs (1929–): British theoretical physicist, recipient of the Dirac Medal and Prize, known for his prediction of the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, nicknamed the "God particle".^[117]
• Roald Hoffmann (1937–): American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.^[118]
• Lancelot Hogben (1895–1975): English experimental zoologist and medical statistician, now best known for his popularising books on science, mathematics and language.^[119]
• Fred Hollows (1929 – 1993), New Zealand and Australian ophthalmologist. He became known for his work in restoring eyesight for countless thousands of people in Australia and many other countries.^[120]
• Fred Hoyle (1915–2001): English astronomer noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally coined by him on BBC radio.^[121]
• Russell Alan Hulse (1950–): American physicist and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with his thesis advisor Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr..^[122]
• Nicholas Humphrey (1943–): British psychologist, working on consciousness and belief in the supernatural from a Darwinian perspective, and primatological research into Machiavellian intelligence theory.^[123]
• Sir Julian Huxley FRS (1887–1975): English evolutionary biologist, a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis, Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, and a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund.^[124]
• François Jacob (1920–): French biologist who, together with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through feedback on transcription. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff.^[125]
• Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900–1958): French physicist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1935.^[56][126]
• Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956): French scientist. She is the daughter of Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. She along with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935.^[57][58]
• Steve Jones (1944–): British geneticist, Professor of genetics and head of the biology department at University College London, and television presenter and a prize-winning author on biology, especially evolution; one of the best known contemporary popular writers on evolution.^[127][128]
• Paul Kammerer (1880–1926): Austrian biologist who studied and advocated the now abandoned Lamarckian theory of inheritance – the notion that organisms may pass to their offspring characteristics they have acquired in their lifetime.^[129][130]
• Samuel Karlin (1924–2007): American mathematician. He did extensive work in mathematical population genetics.^[131]
• Stuart Kauffman (1939-): American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for applying models of Boolean networks to simplified genetic circuits.^[132]
• Ancel Keys (1904–2004): American scientist who studied the influence of diet on health. He examined the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and was responsible for two famous diets: K-rations and the Mediterranean diet.^[133]
• Alfred Dillwyn Knox (1884–1943): British classics scholar and papyrologist at King's College, Cambridge, and a cryptologist. As a member of the World War I Room 40 codebreaking unit, he helped decrypt the Zimmermann Telegram, which brought the USA into the war. At the end of World War I, he joined the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) and on 25 July 1939, as Chief Cryptographer, participated in the Polish-French-British Warsaw meeting that disclosed Polish achievements, since December 1932, in the continuous breaking of German Enigma ciphers, thus kick-starting the British World War II Ultra operations at Bletchley Park.^[134]
• Lawrence Krauss (1954-): Professor of physics at Arizona State University and popularizer of science. Krauss speaks regularly at atheist conferences, like Beyond Belief and Atheist Alliance International.^[135]
• Herbert Kroemer (1928–): German-American professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2000, he along with Zhores I. Alferov, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics".^[136]
• Harold Kroto (1939–): 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.^[137]
• Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956): American biologist, sexologist and professor of entomology and zoology.^[138]
• Ray Kurzweil (1948–): American author, scientist, inventor and futurist. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.^[139]
• Jérôme Lalande (1732–1807): French astronomer and writer.^[140]
• Lev Landau (1908-1968): Russian physicist. He received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of superfluidity.^[141][142]
• Christopher Langton (1948 or 1949-): American computer scientist and one of the founders of the field of artificial life.^[143]
• Richard Leakey (1944–): Kenyan paleontologist, archaeologist and conservationist.^[144]
• Leon M. Lederman (1922–): American physicist who, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988 for their joint research on neutrinos.^[145]
• Jean-Marie Lehn (1939–): French chemist. He received the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen.^[146]
• Sir John Leslie (1766–1832): Scottish mathematician and physicist best remembered for his research into heat; he was the first person to artificially produce ice, and gave the first modern account of capillary action.^[147]
• Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792–1856): Russian mathematician. Known for his works on hyperbolic geometry.^[148][149]
• H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins FRS (1923–2004): English theoretical chemist and a cognitive scientist.^[150]
• Paul MacCready (1925–2007): American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the Kremer prize.^[151]
• Ernst Mach (1838-1916): Austrian physicist and philosopher. Known for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves.^{[152][153][154]}
• Andrey Markov (1856–1922): Russian mathematician. He is best known for his work on stochastic processes.^[155][156]
• Samarendra Maulik (1881–1950): Indian entomologist specialising in the Coleoptera, who worked at the British Museum (Natural History) and a Professor of Zoology at the University of Calcutta.^[157]
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759): French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters. He is often credited with having invented the principle of least action; a version is known as Maupertuis' principle – an integral equation that determines the path followed by a physical system.^[158]
• Hiram Stevens Maxim (1840-1916): American-born British inventor. He was the inventor of the Maxim Gun, the first portable, fully automatic machine gun and an elaborate mousetrap.^[159][160]
• John Maynard Smith (1920–2004): British evolutionary biologist and geneticist, instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution, and noted theorizer on the evolution of sex and signalling theory.^[161]
• Ernst Mayr (1904–2005): a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist. He was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists.^[162]
• John McCarthy (1927–2011): American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who received the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He was responsible for the coining of the term "Artificial Intelligence" in his 1955 proposal for the 1956 Dartmouth Conference and was the inventor of the Lisp programming language.^[163]
• Sir Peter Medawar (1915–1987): Nobel Prize-winning British scientist best known for his work on how the immune system rejects or accepts tissue transplants.^[164]
• Jeff Medkeff (1968–2008): American astronomer, prominent science writer and educator, and designer of robotic telescopes.^[165]
• Élie Metchnikoff (1845–1916): Russian biologist, zoologist and protozoologist. He is best known for his research into the immune system. Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908, shared with Paul Ehrlich.^[166]
• Jonathan Miller CBE (1934–): British physician, actor, theatre and opera director, and television presenter. Wrote and presented the 2004 television series, Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, exploring the roots of his own atheism and investigating the history of atheism in the world.^[167][168]
• Marvin Minsky (1927–2016): American cognitive scientist and computer scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in MIT.^[169][170]
• Peter D. Mitchell (1920–1992): 1978-Nobel-laureate British biochemist. His mother was an atheist and he himself became an atheist at the age of 15.^[171]
• Jacob Moleschott (1822–1893): Dutch physiologist and writer on dietetics.^[172]
• Gaspard Monge (1746–1818): French mathematician. Monge is the inventor of descriptive geometry.^{[17][173][174]}
• Jacques Monod (1910–76): French biologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis.^[175]
• Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012): Italian neurologist who, together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF).^[176]
• Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810): French chemist and paper-manufacturer. In 1783, he made the first ascent in a balloon (inflated with warm air).^[177][178]
• Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945): American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and embryologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries relating the role the chromosome plays in heredity.^[179][180]
• Desmond Morris (1928–): English zoologist and ethologist, famous for describing human behaviour from a zoological perspective in his books The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo.^[181][182]
• Luboš Motl (1973-): Theoretical physics and string theorist. He said he is a Christian atheist.^[183]
• Fritz Müller (1821–1897): German biologist who emigrated to Brazil, where he studied the natural history of the Amazon rainforest and was an early advocate of evolutionary theory.^[184]
• Hermann Joseph Muller (1890–1967): American geneticist and educator, best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation (X-ray mutagenesis). He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1946.^[185]
• PZ Myers (1957–): American biology professor at the University of Minnesota and a blogger via his blog, Pharyngula.^[186]
• John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928–2015): American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. He shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.^[187][188]
• Yuval Ne'eman (1925–2006): Israeli theoretical physicist, military scientist, and politician. One of his greatest achievements in physics was his 1961 discovery of the classification of hadrons through the SU(3)flavour symmetry, now named the Eightfold Way, which was also proposed independently by Murray Gell-Mann.^[189][190]
• Paul Nurse (1949–): English geneticist, President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division (duplication) of cells in the cell cycle.[^[191]
• Mark Oliphant (1901–2000): Australian physicist and humanitarian. He played a fundamental role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion and also the development of the atomic bomb.^[192]
• Alexander Oparin (1894-1980): Soviet biochemist.^[193]
• Frank Oppenheimer (1912–1985): American particle physicist, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, and the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. A younger brother of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer conducted research on aspects of nuclear physics during the time of the Manhattan Project, and made contributions to uranium enrichment.^[194]
• Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932): Baltic German chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities. He, along with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff and Svante Arrhenius, are usually credited with being the modern founders of the field of physical chemistry.^[195]
• Robert L. Park (born 1931): scientist, University of Maryland professor of physics, and author of Voodoo Science and Superstition.^[196]
• Linus Pauling (1901–1994): American chemist, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962)^[65][197]
• John Allen Paulos (1945–): Professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia and writer, author of Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up (2007)^[198]
• Ruby Payne-Scott (1912–1981): Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy, and was the first female radio astronomer.^[199]
• Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936): Nobel Prize–winning Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician, widely known for first describing the phenomenon of classical conditioning.^[200]
• Judea Pearl (1936–): Israeli American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks. He won the Turing Award in 2011.^[201]
• Sir Roger Penrose (1931–): English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He is renowned for his work in mathematical physics, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher^[202][203]
• Francis Perrin (1901–1992): French physicist, co-establisher of the possibility of nuclear chain reactions and nuclear energy production.^[204]
• Jean Baptiste Perrin (1870–1942): French physicist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926.^[205]
• Max Perutz (1914–2002): Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins.^[206]
• Massimo Pigliucci (1964–): Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the Stony Brook University who known as an outspoken critic of creationism and advocate of science education.^[207]
• Steven Pinker (1954–): Canadian-born American psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author.^[208]
• Norman Pirie FRS (1907–1997): British biochemist and virologist co-discoverer in 1936 of viral crystallization, an important milestone in understanding DNA and RNA.^[209]
• Ronald Plasterk (1957–): Dutch prize-winning molecular geneticist and columnist, and Minister of Education, Culture and Science in the fourth Balkenende cabinet for the Labour Party.^[210]
• Derek J. de Solla Price (1922–1983): British-American historian of science.^[211]
• Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930): British mathematician who also made significant contributions in philosophy and economics.^[212]
• Marcus J. Ranum (1962–): American computer and network security researcher and industry leader. He is credited with a number of innovations in firewalls.^[213]
• Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow (1942–): British cosmologist and astrophysicist.^[214]
• Oscar Riddle (1877–1968): American biologist. He is known for his research into the pituitary gland and for isolating the hormone prolactin.^[215]
• Richard J. Roberts (1943–): British biochemist and molecular biologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing.^{[216][217][218]}
• Jason Rohrer (1977-): American computer programmer, writer, musician, and game designer.^[219]
• Steven Rose (1938–): British Professor of Biology and Neurobiology at the Open University and University of London, and author of several popular science books.^[220]
• Marshall Rosenbluth (1927–2003): American physicist, nicknamed "the Pope of Plasma Physics". He created the Metropolis algorithm in statistical mechanics, derived the Rosenbluth formula in high-energy physics, and laid the foundations for instability theory in plasma physics.^[221]
• Bertrand Russell (1872-1970): British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic and political activist. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore, and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. With A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system), and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.^[222]
• Oliver Sacks (1933–2015): United States-based British neurologist, who has written popular books about his patients, the most famous of which is Awakenings.^[223][224]
• Meghnad Saha (1893-1956): Indian astrophysicist noted for his development in 1920 of the thermal ionization equation, has remained fundamental in all work on Stellar atmospheres. This equation has been widely applied to the interpretation of stellar spectra, which are characteristic of the chemical composition of the light source. The Saha equation links the composition and appearance of the spectrum with the temperature of the light source and can thus be used to determine either the temperature of the star or the relative abundance of the chemical elements investigated.^[225][226]
• Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989): Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He gained renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Sakharov Prize, which is awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms, is named in his honor.^{[227][228][229]}
• Robert Sapolsky (1957–): American Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University.^[230]
• Wallace L. W. Sargent (1935–): American astronomer.^[231]
• Mahendralal Sarkar (1833–1904): Indian physician and academic.^[232]
• Marcus du Sautoy (1965–): mathematician and holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science.^[233]
• Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961): Austrian-Irish physicist and theoretical biologist. A pioneer of quantum mechanics and winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics.^{[234][235][236][237][238][239]}
• Laurent Schwartz (1915–2002): French mathematician, awarded the Fields medal for his work on distributions.^[240]
• Claude Shannon (1916–2001): American electrical engineer and mathematician, has been called "the father of information theory", and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory.^[241]
• Edwin Shneidman (1918–2009): American suicidologist and thanatologist.^[242]
• William Shockley (1910–1989): American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.^[243]
• William James Sidis (1898–1944): American mathematician, cosmologist, inventor, linguist, historian and child prodigy.^[244]
• Boris Sidis (1867-1923): Russian American psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education. Sidis founded the New York State Psychopathic Institute and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He was the father of child prodigy William James Sidis.^[244]
• Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001):American Nobel laureate, was a political scientist, economist, sociologist, psychologist, computer scientist, and Richard King Mellon Professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics, management, philosophy of science, sociology, and political science, unified by studies of decision-making. .^[245]
• B. F. Skinner (1904-1990): American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. Skinner developed a philosophy of science that he called radical behaviorism, and founded a school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.^[246]
• Stephen Smale (1930–): American mathematician.^[247]
• Michael Smith (1932–2000): British-born Canadian biochemist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1993.^[248]
• John Maynard Smith (1920-2004): British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory.^[249]
• Lee Smolin (1955–): American theoretical physicist, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo.^[250]
• Alan Sokal (1955–): American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in 1996.^[251]
• Richard Stallman (1953–): American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer.^[252]
• Jack Steinberger (1921–): German-American-Swiss physicist and Nobel Laureate in 1988, co-discoverer of the muon neutrino.^[253]
• Hugo Steinhaus (1887–1972): Polish mathematician and educator.^[254]
• Victor J. Stenger (1935–): American physicist, emeritus professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawaii and adjunct professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado. Author of the book God: The Failed Hypothesis.^[255][256]
• Jack Suchet (1908–2001): South African born British obstetrician, gynaecologist and venereologist, who carried out research on the use of penicillin in the treatment of venereal disease with Sir Alexander Fleming.^[257]
• Eleazar Sukenik (1889–1953): Israeli archaeologist and professor of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, undertaking excavations in Jerusalem, and recognising the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Israel.^[258]
• John Sulston (1942–): British biologist. He is a joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.^[259]
• Leonard Susskind (1940–): American theoretical physicist; a founding father of superstring theory and professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University.^[260]
• Aaron Swartz (1986–2012): American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. Swartz was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the organization Creative Commons, the website framework web.py and the social news site Reddit, in which he was an equal partner after its merger with his Infogami company.^[261]
• Raymond Tallis (1946–): Leading British gerontologist, philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic.^[262]
• Igor Tamm (1895–1971): Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, for their 1934 discovery of Cherenkov radiation.^{[263][264][265]}
• Arthur Tansley (1871–1955): English botanist who was a pioneer in the science of ecology.^[266]
• Alfred Tarski (1901-1983): Polish logician, mathematician and philosopher, a prolific author best known for his work on model theory, metamathematics, and algebraic logic.^[267]
• Kip Thorne (1940–): American theoretical physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics and also for the popular science book, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy.^[268]
• Nikolaas Tinbergen (1907–1988): Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.^[269]
• Gherman Titov (1935–2000): Soviet cosmonaut and the second human to orbit the Earth.^[270]
• Linus Torvalds (1969–): Finnish software engineer, creator of the Linux kernel.^[271]
• Alan Turing (1912–1954): English mathematician, logician, and cryptologist; often considered to be the father of modern computer science. The Turing Award, often recognized as the "Nobel Prize of computing", is named after him.^[272][273]
• Matthew Turner (died ca. 1789): chemist, surgeon, teacher and radical theologian, author of the first published work of avowed atheism in Britain (1782).^[274][275]
• Harold Urey (1893–1981): American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, but may be most prominent for his contribution to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.^[276][277]
• Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943): Russian and Soviet botanist and geneticist best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. He devoted his life to the study and improvement of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops that sustain the global population.^[278]
• J. Craig Venter (1946–): American biologist and entrepreneur, one of the first researchers to sequence the human genome, and in 2010 the first to create a cell with a synthetic genome.^[279]
• Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945): Ukrainian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism.^[280]
• W. Grey Walter (1910–1977): American neurophysiologist famous for his work on brain waves, and robotician.^[281]
• James D. Watson (1928–): 1962-Nobel-laureate and co-discover of the structure of DNA.^[282][283]
• Joseph Weber (1919–2000): American physicist, who gave the earliest public lecture on the principles behind the laser and the maser, and developed the first gravitational wave detectors (Weber bars).^[284]
• Steven Weinberg (1933–): American theoretical physicist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for the unification of electromagnetism and the weak force into the electroweak force.^{[285][286][287]}
• Victor Weisskopf (1908–2002): Austrian-American theoretical physicist, co-founder and board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.^[288]
• Frank Whittle (1907–1996): English aerospace engineer, inventor, aviator and Royal Air Force officer. He is credited with independently inventing the turbojet engine (some years earlier than Germany's Dr. Hans von Ohain) and is regarded by many as the father of jet propulsion.^[289]
• Eugene Wigner (1902–1995): Hungarian American theoretical physicist and mathematician. He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"; the other half of the award was shared between Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. Wigner is important for having laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics as well as for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus. It was Eugene Wigner who first identified Xe-135 "poisoning" in nuclear reactors, and for this reason it is sometimes referred to as Wigner poisoning. Wigner is also important for his work in pure mathematics, having authored a number of theorems.^[290]
• Ian Wilmut (1944-): English embryologist and is currently Director of the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known as the leader of the research group that in 1996 first cloned a mammal from an adult somatic cell, a Finnish Dorset lamb named Dolly.^[291]
• David Sloan Wilson (1949–): American evolutionary biologist, son of Sloan Wilson, proponent of multilevel selection theory and author of several popular books on evolution.^[292]
• Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS British FRSL (1929–): developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster.^[293]
• Steve Wozniak (1950–): co-founder of Apple Computer and inventor of the Apple I and Apple II.^[294]
• Elizur Wright (1804–1885): American mathematician and abolitionist, sometimes described as the "father of life insurance" for his pioneering work on actuarial tables.^[295][296]
• Will Wright (1960–): American computer game designer and co-founder of the game development company Maxis.^[297]
• Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979–): American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence.^[298]
• Oscar Zariski (1899–1986): American mathematician and one of the most influential algebraic geometers of the 20th century.^[299]
• Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich (1914–1987): Soviet physicist born in Belarus. He played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, and made important contributions to the fields of adsorption and catalysis, shock waves, nuclear physics, particle physics, astrophysics, physical cosmology, and general relativity.^[300][301]
• Emile Zuckerkandl (1922-2013): Austrian-born biologist who is considered one of the founders of the field of molecular evolution, who co-introduced the concept of the "molecular clock", which enabled the neutral theory of molecular evolution.^[302]
• Konrad Zuse (1910–1995): German civil engineer and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, which became operational in May 1941.^[303][304]
• Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974): Swiss astronomer and astrophysicist.^[305][306]

Notes and references

External links

• Twentieth Century Atheists on University of Cambridge's investigating atheism website