This is a short list of the scientists that have contributed teh most to physics, and what they have accomplished. It is provided maily so that you will not mix them up.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo was a physicist before there was physics. He lived from 1564 to 1642, and was one of the first to publicly queston the accepted fact that the earth was the center of the universe. Galileo held that the world's conclusions about physics must be based on experimentation and analysis, and not simply faith. He proved that all masses fall at the same speed, and he made many attempts to do phenomenally hard experiments, such as measuring the speed of light. Galileo was truly a scientific revolutionary.

Sir Isaac Newton

Newton is one of the founders of physics. He was the first man to formulate a law about gravitation, the law we now call Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. Until Albert Einstein was born, Newton's conclusions about the nature of gravity were the only tool that physicists had. In addition, this amazing scientist is responsible for the equations that we use involving rotation and centripetal force. Newton was born in 1642, and contributed much more than gravitational laws during the course of his life. Isaac Newton is also responsible for the idea of a light spectrum, and he determined the properties of white light.

Tycho Brahe

This man was extremely devoted to his studies, and his hard work payed off in many, many ways. He was born in Denmark in 1546 and died in the year 1601. He started his astronomy at the age of only 14 after viewing an eclipse of the sun. Brahe persuaded the King of Denmark to give him an entire island, on which he built the finest observatory constructed. Brahe had his faults, however. He was generally grumpy, and he would not believe that the earth was not the center of the universe. This likely kept him from forming any specific conclusions about the heavens.

Johannes Kepler

Kepler, born in 1571, was an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe from the age of 19. Unlike Brahe, he did not believe that the earth was the center of the universe, instead he believed that our solar system rotated around the sun. Kepler studied Brahe's data for many years, and from that data he made three conclusions, which we now call Kepler's Laws. Amazingly, a record from Kepler's time quotes him as saying that it would take only four hours to travel to the moon, which wouldn't be a long trip at all if the passengers took narcotics to pass the time. Hmm.

Charles Coulomb

This scientist spent a lot of his life studying electrical charge. Unlike an earlier scientist, Henry Cavendish (who measured charge based on the pain it produced when you touched it) Coulomb made exact electrical measurements. Coulomb lived from 1736 until 1806, and in this time he managed to formulate Coulomb's Law. In addition, he found out the constant for his law, and had the basic unit of charge named in his honor.

Robert Millikan

American physicist Millikan is best known for his oil drop experiment, which he did at the age of 41 in the year 1909. Millikan set up an experiment which isolated a drop of oil, and then caused it to be suspended in mid air by the conflicting forces of gravity and an electric field. Millikan managed to extrapolate the charge on one electron, also known as the elementary unit of charge. Millikan also proved Einstein's theory on the "photoelectric effect" and won a Nobel prize.

Andre Ampere

Ampere first conceived the idea of the "domain" theory of magnetism. This theory states that the electrons in a magnet can align, resulting in a current flowing through tiny loops, which in turn causes a magnetic field to form around and within the magnet. Another experiment Ampere did demonstrated that current carrying wires exerted a force on each other. The unit of current was named after him in honor of his contributions to science.

Georg Ohm

Ohm is best known for Ohm's Law, which stated the relationship between the current, voltage and resistance of a circuit. Because he found this relationship, the unit of resistance was named after him. Ohm also wrote that resistance is not influenced by the direction of the potential difference. Georg Ohm was born in 1787 and died in the year 1854.

Michael Faraday

Faraday is another one of those huge names in science. From the day he was born in 1791 until the day he died 77 years later, his life was devoted to knowledge. He developed the concept of the electric field, and he determined the direction that the force on a current carrying wire takes in a magnetic field. Our left hand rules about current all spring from his research. In 1822 Faraday wrote in his book of goals "Convert Magnetism into Electricity," in much the same way we would write "go for groceries." After 10 years he found that a changing magnetic field produced an electric current. Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, by moving a wire in a magnetic field. The unit of capacitance (not discussed here) is the Farad, named after Michael Faraday.

Hans Oerstead

Oerstead stumbled upon a brilliant discovery during one of his electrical experiments. He placed a wire across a compass, and saw the needle move. He found that electricity produced a magnetic field. He was born in 1777 and died in 1851.

H.F.E. Lenz

In 1834, Lenz determined the direction of the force on wires in an armature of a motor. His discovery is known as Lenz's law and it contributed greatly to the construction of electrical devices and generators. The concept of Back EMF and self-inductance are offshoots of his discovery.

Albert Michelson

This scientist was the first American to ever win a Nobel prize. He lived from 1852 until 1931, and from 1880 and 1920 he developed the techniques needed to measure the speed of light. He had followed in the footsteps of the greatest scientists like Galileo and Roemer (Roemer was teh first to collect data on he speed of light).

Willebrord Snell

Although some might consider him to be just another guy with an odd name, Snell was a great physicist. Snell developed trigonometric triangulation, and formulated Snell's Law in the year 1621. Snell's discovery was not officially published until 1638 because his work had been illegally published by another man, named Descartes. Snell was born in 1591 and died at the fairly young age of 35.