30 articles
Adalberto Giazotto
Adalberto Giazotto (1940–2017) was an Italian experimental physicist at INFN Pisa who, with Alain Brillet, conceived and led the Virgo gravitational-wave interferometer and invented the superattenuator.
Alessandra Buonanno
Alessandra Buonanno (born 1968 in Cassino, Italy) is an Italian and US theoretical physicist who co-developed the effective-one-body formalism for predicting gravitational waves from merging black holes.
Alicia Magdalena Sintes
Alicia Magdalena Sintes Olives is a Spanish gravitational-wave physicist, full professor of Theoretical Physics at the Universitat de les Illes Balears and a LIGO Scientific Collaboration member since 1997.
Barry C. Barish
Barry C. Barish, born in 1936, is an American experimental physicist who shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the first direct detection of gravitational waves.
Bernard F. Schutz
Bernard F. Schutz (born 1946) is an American-born theoretical physicist known for the standard-siren method of measuring cosmic distances, and founding director of the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam.
David Reitze
David H. Reitze is an experimental physicist who leads the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech and announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2016.
Fabrizio Barone
Fabrizio Barone is an Italian physicist and full professor at the University of Salerno, a proponent of the VIRGO gravitational-wave interferometer and the Einstein Telescope.
Fausto Acernese
Fausto Acernese, born in Avellino, Italy, in 1975, is an Italian experimental physicist and associate professor at the University of Salerno working on Virgo gravitational-wave detection.
Gabriela González
Gabriela González, born 1965 in Córdoba, Argentina, is a physicist at Louisiana State University who served as LIGO spokesperson from 2011 to 2017, during the first gravitational-wave detection.
Heinz Billing
Heinz Billing (1914–2017) was a German physicist who built the first electronic computers in postwar Germany and started the laser-interferometer work behind the 2015 gravitational-wave detection.
James Hough
Sir James (Jim) Hough, born in 1945, is a British experimental physicist at Glasgow who led development of the mirror suspensions that made LIGO's 2015 gravitational-wave detection possible.
Joseph Weber
Joseph Weber (1919–2000) was an American physicist at the University of Maryland who founded the experimental search for gravitational waves and pioneered the resonant bar detector.
Katerina Chatziioannou
Katerina Chatziioannou is a theoretical astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at Caltech who studies neutron-star matter and tests of general relativity with LIGO gravitational-wave data.
Kip Thorne
Kip Thorne is an American theoretical physicist at Caltech who co-founded the LIGO project and shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the first direct observation of gravitational waves.
Krzysztof Belczyński
Krzysztof Belczyński was a Polish theoretical astrophysicist who predicted stellar black hole masses and merger rates later confirmed by the first gravitational-wave detection in 2015.
Maura McLaughlin
Maura McLaughlin is an American astrophysicist and professor at West Virginia University who co-discovered rotating radio transients, the first fast radio burst, and evidence of a gravitational-wave background.
Mikhail E. Gertsenshtein
Mikhail E. Gertsenshtein (Михаил Евгеньевич Герценштейн; 1926–2010) was a Soviet physicist who in 1962 described the Gertsenshtein effect and, with V. I. Pustovoit, the first laser interferometric gravitational-wave detector.
Nergis Mavalvala
Nergis Mavalvala is a Pakistani-American astrophysicist at MIT, born in Karachi, who worked on LIGO's first direct detection of gravitational waves and serves as Dean of the MIT School of Science.
Peter Shawhan
Peter Shawhan, also known as Peter Sven Shawhan, is an American physicist and professor at the University of Maryland who helped validate LIGO's first gravitational-wave detection in 2015.
Rainer Weiss
Rainer Weiss (1932–2025) was an American experimental physicist at MIT who conceived the laser interferometer that became LIGO and shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting gravitational waves.
Robert L. Forward
Robert L. Forward (Robert Lull Forward) was an American gravitational physicist and inventor who spent 31 years at Hughes Aircraft and wrote 11 hard science fiction novels.
Rochus E. Vogt
Rochus E. Vogt, known as Robbie, is a Caltech physicist and the first director of the LIGO project from 1987 to 1994, where he led the 1989 construction proposal that won funding.
Ronald Drever
Ronald Drever (1931–2017) was a Scottish experimental physicist who co-founded LIGO and invented the optical techniques behind its 2015 gravitational-wave detection, dying months before the 2017 Nobel Prize went to his colleagues.
Russell A. Hulse
Russell A. Hulse is an American physicist who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics with Joseph Taylor for discovering the first binary pulsar at Arecibo in 1974.
Russell Alan Hulse
Russell Alan Hulse is an American physicist who, as a graduate student in 1974, discovered the first binary pulsar at Arecibo, earning the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics with Joseph Taylor.
Stanley E. Whitcomb
Stanley E. Whitcomb is a physicist who served as Chief Scientist of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech and retired in 2015, one day after LIGO's first gravitational-wave detection.
Sterl Phinney
Sterl Phinney, publishing as E. S. Phinney, is a theoretical astrophysicist and Caltech professor whose 1991 estimate of neutron star merger rates shaped LIGO, and who led LISA's science definition.
Vasiliki Kalogera
Vasiliki Kalogera, known professionally as Vicky Kalogera, is a Greek-born American astrophysicist at Northwestern University who studies compact-object binaries and is a longtime member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
Vladislav I. Pustovoit
Vladislav Ivanovich Pustovoit (Владислав Иванович Пустовойт) was a Russian physicist and RAS academician who, with Mikhail Gertsenshtein, proposed in 1962 detecting gravitational waves with an optical interferometer.
Zsolt Frei
Zsolt Frei is a Hungarian astronomer and physicist, a Széchenyi Prize winner and professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest who leads Hungary's participation in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.