Physicists and astronomers

W-Z

Watt, James 1736-1819
British engineer who gave his name to the unit for power.

Wheatstone, Sir Charles 1802-1875
English physicist. Invented the Wheatstone bridge as a method of comparing and measuring resistances. Measured the speed of electric discharge in conductors. Invented the electric telegraph first installed commercially in 1838.

Wien, Wilhelm 1864-1928
German physicist. His work on the energy distribution in black body radiation led directly to the development of the quantum theory. Nobel Prize in 1911 for discovering this law.

Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees 1869-1959
British physicist. Invented the cloud chamber (1911). Received the Nobel prize for this work in 1927.

Wolf, Maximillian Franz 1863-1932
German astronomer. Discovered Wolf-Rayet stars. Discovered a minor planet by photography. Discovered more than 1000 dark nebulae.

Young, Thomas 1773-1829
Developed the wave theory of light. Interference. Elasticity. Interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Discovered the action of the ciliary muscles of the eye and the phenomenon of astigmatism.

Pieter, Zeeman 1865-1943
Netherlands physicist. Discovered and xxplained the splitting of spectral lines in a magnetic field - the effect named after him. Director of the Amsterdam Physics laboratory for thirty five years. Nobel prize for Physics in 1902.