Physicists and astronomers

Nathan H. Burnett

Nathan H. Burnett is a physicist who, with P. B. Corkum and M. Y. Ivanov, proposed polarization gating in a 1994 Optics Letters paper, now a standard method for isolating single attosecond pulses.

Nathan Rosen (1909–1995) was an American-Israeli theoretical physicist who co-authored the 1935 EPR paper with Einstein and Podolsky, introduced the Einstein–Rosen bridge, and founded Technion's physics department in Haifa.

Nathan Seiberg

Nathan Seiberg, born in Israel in 1956, is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, known for Seiberg–Witten theory, Seiberg duality, and generalized global symmetries.

Nathan Smith (astronomer)

Nathan Smith is an astronomer and Professor at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, who studies the evolution and death of massive stars, supernovae, and eruptive transients like Eta Carinae.

Nathaniel David Mermin

N. David Mermin, born 1935 in New Haven, Connecticut, is an American theoretical physicist at Cornell University known for the Mermin–Wagner theorem and the textbook Solid State Physics.

Nathaniel Ferraro

Nathaniel M. Ferraro is an American plasma physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Deputy Head of its Theory Department since 2022 and a 2025 PECASE awardee.

Nathaniel Gabor

Nathaniel Gabor is an American experimental condensed matter physicist at UC Riverside, known for energy transfer in atomically thin 2D materials and receiving the 2019 PECASE award.

Nazzareno Mandolesi

Nazzareno Mandolesi, born in 1944, is an Italian cosmologist who was Principal Investigator of the Low Frequency Instrument on ESA's Planck satellite, sharing the 2018 Gruber Prize in Cosmology.

Neil Ashcroft

Neil Ashcroft (1938–2021) was a British-born condensed matter theorist at Cornell University, known for his 1968 prediction that metallic hydrogen would be a high-temperature superconductor and for the standard textbook Solid State Physics with David Mermin.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator who has directed New York City's Hayden Planetarium since 1996 and hosted the 2014 series Cosmos.

Neil F. Johnson

Neil F. Johnson is a British-trained physicist and professor at George Washington University since 2018 who applies many-body physics to online hate, extremism, insurgency, and finance.

Neil Gehrels

Neil Gehrels (1952–2017) was an American astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who led the Swift gamma-ray burst mission and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Neil Gershenfeld

Neil Gershenfeld is an MIT physicist who directs the Center for Bits and Atoms and originated the global fab lab network, community workshops offering public access to digital fabrication tools.

Sep 20, 2026

Neil Greenham

Neil C. Greenham is a Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, known for polymer LEDs and hybrid solar cells, and received the Royal Society Kavli Medal in 2013.

Neil Turok

Neil Turok is a South African theoretical physicist known for the cyclic model of cosmology and for founding the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in 2003.

Nels Edlefsen

Nels Edlefsen, born 1893, was an American physicist who built the first crude cyclotron chambers in 1930 as Ernest Lawrence's first Ph.D. student at Berkeley, co-announced the method, and later worked in soil science.

Nelson James Terrell

Nelson James Terrell, born 1923, was an American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who showed in 1959 that a fast-moving object appears rotated, not contracted, in photographs.

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.

Neta Bahcall

Neta Bahcall is an Israeli-born astrophysicist, the Eugene Higgins Professor at Princeton University, known for measuring the universe's mass density with galaxy clusters and the cosmic triangle framework.

Netta Engelhardt

Netta Engelhardt is an Associate Professor of Physics at MIT who works on quantum gravity and the black hole information paradox, winning the 2021 New Horizons Prize.

Nian Lin

Nian Lin (林念) is a surface physicist, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since 2007, known for single-molecule Kondo physics and on-surface metal–organic frameworks.

Nicholas B. Suntzeff

Nicholas B. Suntzeff is an astronomer and cosmologist who co-founded the Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey and the High-Z Supernova Team, which discovered the universe's accelerating expansion in 1998.

Nicholas Butch

Nicholas P. Butch is an American condensed matter physicist at the NIST Center for Neutron Research, a PECASE recipient known for work on unconventional superconductivity in uranium ditelluride.

Nicholas Christofilos

Nicholas Christofilos (Νικόλαος Χριστοφίλου), 1916 to 1972, was a Greek-American elevator engineer who independently invented strong focusing for particle accelerators, then led Project Argus and the Astron fusion program at Livermore.

Nicholas Hutzler

Nicholas Hutzler, also known as Nick Hutzler, is an American atomic and molecular physicist at Caltech who uses laser-based precision measurements of cold molecules to search for new particles and forces.

Nicholas Kaiser

Nicholas (Nick) Kaiser (1954–2023) was a cosmologist who turned weak gravitational lensing into a tool for mapping dark matter and led the Pan-STARRS survey in Hawaii.

Nicholas Kemmer

Nicholas Kemmer (1911–1998) was a British theoretical physicist, born in St Petersburg, who predicted the pion's three charge states in 1938 and was Tait Professor at Edinburgh from 1953 to 1979.

Nicholas Mayall

Nicholas Mayall (1906–1993) was an American observational astronomer who spent over 25 years at Lick Observatory and served as second director of Kitt Peak National Observatory, 1960–1971.

Nicholas Metropolis

Nicholas Metropolis (1915–1999) was an American physicist at Los Alamos who helped develop the Monte Carlo method, built the MANIAC computer, and lent his name to the Metropolis algorithm.