Physical and mathematical scientists

J. David Neelin

J. David Neelin is a Canadian-American climate scientist and Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA, known for work on tropical climate dynamics and precipitation under global warming.

J. Ernest Wilkins Jr.

J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. was an American mathematician who joined the Manhattan Project at 21 and became the second African American member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Sep 20, 2026

J. Fraser Stoddart

Sir J. Fraser Stoddart (1942–2024) was a Scottish-born chemist who introduced the mechanical bond and won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for molecular machines.

J. Frederick Grassle

J. Frederick Grassle was an American oceanographer who led the first biological expedition to deep-sea hydrothermal vents in 1979 and received the 2013 Japan Prize.

J. Gary Eden

J. Gary Eden is an American electrical engineer and applied physicist at the University of Illinois, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014 for microplasma technologies and excimer lasers.

J. Georg Bednorz

J. Georg Bednorz, also known as Georg Bednorz, is a German physicist who discovered high-temperature superconductivity in 1986 and won the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics.

J. H. C. Whitehead

J. H. C. Whitehead, full name John Henry Constantine Whitehead, was a British mathematician and a founder of modern algebraic topology, best known for the CW complex and the Whitehead theorem.

J. Hans D. Jensen

J. Hans D. Jensen, born Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen (1907–1973), was a German nuclear physicist at Heidelberg who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for the nuclear shell model.

J. Howard Redfield

J. Howard Redfield (1879–1944) was an American engineer whose single 1927 paper established the Pólya–Redfield enumeration theorem, anticipating results usually credited to George Pólya by a decade.

J. Ilja Siepmann

J. Ilja Siepmann (Joern Ilja Siepmann) is a German-born chemist and professor at the University of Minnesota since 1994, known for the TraPPE force fields and Monte Carlo algorithms.

J. J. Thomson

J. J. Thomson, born Joseph John Thomson, was an English physicist who discovered the electron in 1897 and won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics.

J. John Sepkoski

J. John Sepkoski (1948–1999) was an American paleontologist at the University of Chicago known for compiling global marine diversity and the 26-million-year extinction cycle claim.

J. Justin Gooding

J. Justin Gooding, also known as John Justin Gooding, is an Australian electrochemist and biosensor researcher at UNSW Sydney and the inaugural editor-in-chief of ACS Sensors.

J. Larry Duda

J. Larry Duda (John Larry Duda, 1936–2006) was an American chemical engineer and Penn State professor who co-created the Vrentas-Duda free-volume theory of molecular transport in polymers.

J. Lawrence Smith (chemist)

J. Lawrence Smith, born John Lawrence Smith (1818–1883), was an American chemist, mineralogist, and physician who invented the inverted microscope, devised a standard silicate analysis method, and studied meteorites.

J. Marshall Shepherd

J. Marshall Shepherd (James Marshall Shepherd) is an American atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia known for research on urban effects on weather and hurricanes.

J. Michael Harrison

J. Michael Harrison (John Michael Harrison, born 1944) is an operations researcher who spent 1970 to 2011 at Stanford, known for Brownian networks and equivalent martingale measures in option pricing.

J. Michael Kosterlitz

J. Michael Kosterlitz, born John Michael Kosterlitz in 1943, is a British condensed-matter physicist at Brown University known for the Kosterlitz–Thouless transition and the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.

J. Murray Mitchell

J. Murray Mitchell (1928–1990) was an American climatologist who coined the term Arctic haze and became an early voice warning of global warming, serving as senior research climatologist at NOAA.

J. Paul Attfield

J. Paul Attfield is a materials chemist at the University of Edinburgh known for solving the Verwey problem of magnetite in 2012 and elected a Royal Society Fellow in 2014.

J. Peter May

J. Peter May, born in 1939, is an American algebraic topologist at the University of Chicago known for the recognition theorem for iterated loop spaces, the little-cubes operads, and influential textbooks.

J. Randall Jokipii

J. Randall Jokipii, born Jack Randolph Jokipii (1939–2022), was an American space physicist at the University of Arizona known for his theory of cosmic-ray transport in the heliosphere.

J. Richard Bond

J. Richard Bond, born John Richard Bond in 1950, is a Canadian theoretical cosmologist at the University of Toronto who won the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy.

J. Richard Fisher

J. Richard Fisher is an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who co-discovered the Tully–Fisher relation with R. Brent Tully in 1977, a key method for measuring galaxy distances.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer, born Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), was an American theoretical physicist who led development of the first atomic bombs as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory.

J. Ross Mackay

J. Ross Mackay (John Ross Mackay, 1915–2014) was a Canadian geographer at the University of British Columbia, Canada's pre-eminent Arctic scientist and a world authority on permafrost.

J. S. E. Townsend

J. S. E. Townsend, born John Sealy Edward Townsend in Galway, Ireland, was an Irish physicist who held the Wykeham Professorship of Experimental Physics at Oxford from 1900 to 1941.

J. Taylor Perron

J. Taylor Perron is an American geomorphologist at MIT who studies how landscapes form on Earth and other planets, and won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.

J. Tinsley Oden

J. Tinsley Oden (1936–2023) was an American engineer and mathematician at UT Austin, widely known as the founder of computational mechanics and namesake of its Oden Institute.