Researchers in applied physics, optics, photonics, and plasma physics

Richard D. Schaller

Richard D. Schaller is an American ultrafast spectroscopist at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory, known for the 2004 report of efficient carrier multiplication in lead selenide quantum dots.

Richard Horne

Richard Horne (born 1955) is a British space plasma physicist at the British Antarctic Survey known for showing that chorus waves accelerate radiation belt electrons.

Richard P. Van Duyne

Richard P. Van Duyne (1945–2019) was an American analytical chemist at Northwestern University who led surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, invented nanosphere lithography, and developed LSPR biosensing.

Roald Sagdeev

Roald Sagdeev (Роальд Сагдеев), born 1932, is a Soviet-born plasma physicist known for collisionless shock waves and plasma turbulence, who directed the Soviet Space Research Institute from 1973 to 1988.

Robert Hellwarth

Robert Hellwarth (1930–2021) was an American physicist and electrical engineer who invented Q-switching, which raises a laser's peak power a millionfold, and developed optical phase conjugation.

Robert L. Byer

Robert L. Byer is an American applied physicist at Stanford University known for laser science and nonlinear optics, including the diode-pumped YAG laser that forms LIGO's main beams.

Robert W. Boyd

Robert W. Boyd is an American physicist in nonlinear optics and quantum photonics, a professor at Rochester and Ottawa known for slow and fast light research.

Robert W. Tkach

Robert W. Tkach is an American physicist at Nokia Bell Labs known for optical fiber communications research, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009.

Robert W. Wood

Robert W. Wood was an American experimental physicist, professor at Johns Hopkins from 1901 to 1938, known for ultraviolet photography, resonance radiation, blazed diffraction gratings, and his 1904 debunking of N-rays.

Roberto Morandotti

Roberto Morandotti is a full professor at INRS in Montreal who works in integrated and quantum photonics, known for the first chip-based generation of complex entangled quantum states of light.

Rodney S. Tucker

Rodney S. Tucker is an Australian electrical engineer and Laureate Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne, known for work on optical networking and telecommunications energy efficiency.

Roger Angel

Roger Angel, born 1941, is an astronomer and optical scientist at the University of Arizona known for casting lightweight honeycomb mirrors for the world's largest telescopes.

Roger Hall Stolen

Roger Hall Stolen is an American physicist and electrical engineer known for pioneering fiber nonlinear optics, first observing optical solitons, and inventing polarization preserving fiber.

Romain Quidant

Romain Quidant is a physicist in nanophotonics and plasmonics, Full Professor at ETH Zurich since 2020, known for thermoplasmonics and chip-scale vacuum levitation of nanoparticles.

Rowland W. Redington

Rowland W. Redington (1925–1995) was an American physicist who led General Electric teams in Schenectady, New York, driving advances in CT and MRI, including high-field imaging.

Oct 10, 2026

Roy Taylor (British laser physicist)

Roy Taylor, full name James Roy Taylor, is a British laser physicist and Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London, known for supercontinuum "white light" fiber sources.

Roy W. Gould

Roy W. Gould (1927–2022) was an American plasma physicist at Caltech known for the Trivelpiece–Gould modes, plasma wave echoes, and directing US fusion research from 1970 to 1972.

Rupert F. Oulton

Rupert F. Oulton is a physicist in nanophotonics and plasmonics, Professor of Nanophotonics at Imperial College London since 2020, known for the 2009 plasmon laser demonstration in Nature.

Russell G. Meyerand Jr.

Russell G. Meyerand Jr. (1933–2003) was an American plasma physicist and corporate research executive at United Technologies who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978.

Sajeev John

Sajeev John is a Canadian theoretical physicist at the University of Toronto who co-founded photonic band gap materials and shared the 2001 King Faisal International Prize in Science.

Oct 10, 2026

Samuel T. Hess

Samuel T. Hess is an American physicist at the University of Maine who helped develop fPALM, one of three independently developed 2006 super-resolution fluorescence microscopy methods.

Sang‐Hyun Oh

Sang-Hyun Oh is an electrical engineer and physicist at the University of Minnesota who leads a biosensing lab and is known for atomically smooth metal nanostructures and ultrasensitive optical biosensors.

Sanjit K. Mitra

Sanjit K. Mitra (born 1935) is an Indian-American signal processing engineer and professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003.

Sanjit Kumar Mitra

Sanjit Kumar Mitra, born 1935, is an Indian-American signal processing engineer, professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara and USC, known for signal processing research and widely used textbooks.

Satoshi Kawata

Satoshi Kawata (河田聡), born in 1951, is a Japanese applied physicist and Distinguished Professor at Osaka University, known for tip-enhanced near-field microscopy, two-photon polymerization, and plasmonics.

Scott E. Fraser

Scott E. Fraser is an American biophysicist and inventor, Provost Professor at the University of Southern California, known for imaging embryonic development and inventing multispectral and 4D confocal microscopy.

Seok Hyun Yun

Seok Hyun Yun (Korean: 윤석현) is a biomedical engineer and physicist at the Wellman Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard, known for miniature endomicroscopes and Brillouin microscopy.

Sergei K. Turitsyn

Sergei K. Turitsyn is a researcher in nonlinear photonics, soliton theory, and optical communications, Professor at Aston University since 2005 and director of the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies.

Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi

Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi (born 1955) is a Russian-born Danish physicist working in plasmonics, professor at the University of Southern Denmark and head of its Centre for Nano Optics.