Trinity College physicists
Saturday July 7, 2007
On June 7, 1668, Sir Isaac Newton received his Master's degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. Over the years, many notable physics personalities have also graduated from Cambridge, including 13 Nobel Prize in Physics laureates (oddly enough, some of these were not listed among their "Notable Alumni"), so I thought it would be nice to take a look at some of the Trinity College alumni who have gone on to such achievements:
- Sir Isaac Newton - founder of modern physics with his work in defining the fundamental laws of motion and law of gravity.
- Adam Sedgwick - Geologist
- Charles Babbage - Mathematician & inventor of a precursor to the modern computer
- George Airy - Astronomer & geophysicist
- James Challis - Astronomer who twice observed Neptune before its discovery, but did not note it (which makes him somewhat of a careless astronomer, as well).
- Arthur Cayley - Mathematician who invented matrices and did work in non-Euclidean geometry
- Francis Galton - Meteorologist & biologist (heredity studies)
- James Clerk Maxwell - Physicist who defined the basic principles of electromagnetism through equations that are known as Maxwell's Equations.
- Lord Rayleigh - Physicist who isolated the inert gas argon for which he received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- James Jeans - Astronomer & mathematician who did much work with stellar evolution.
- Arthur Eddington - Astronomer who performed the solar eclipse experiment which confirmed the prediction of Einstein's theory of relativity that light was bent by the Sun's gravity.
- G. I. Taylor - Physicist & mathematician who studied fluid dynamics & crystals.
- Sydney Chapman - Mathematician & geophysicist who worked with kinetic theory and geomagnetism.
- Christopher, Lord Hinton - Nuclear engineer who constructed Calder Hall nuclear power station, the first large scale nuclear reactor.
- Otto Frisch - Nuclear physicist who first used the term nuclear fission.
Source: Trinity College Cambridge - Famous Alumni, a list which was originally compiled by Dr. Sean Blanchflower.
Oddly enough, this particular list leaves off some notable names such as Niels Bohr, who I believe got his undergraduate degree at Trinity (he is claimed on their Nobel Laureates page), and also Stephen Hawking. So this list should in no way be treated as comprehensive.


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