The Most Famous

PHYSICISTS from Canada

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This page contains a list of the greatest Canadian Physicists. The pantheon dataset contains 851 Physicists, 9 of which were born in Canada. This makes Canada the birth place of the 16th most number of Physicists behind Ukraine, and Hungary.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Canadian Physicists of all time. This list of famous Canadian Physicists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Canadian Physicists.

Photo of Willard Boyle

1. Willard Boyle (1924 - 2011)

With an HPI of 66.27, Willard Boyle is the most famous Canadian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 64 different languages on wikipedia.

Willard Sterling Boyle, (August 19, 1924 – May 7, 2011) was a Canadian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm he helped select lunar landing sites and provided support for the Apollo space program. On October 6, 2009, it was announced that he would share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor, which has become an electronic eye in almost all areas of photography". He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada – the award's highest level – on June 30, 2010.

Photo of Richard E. Taylor

2. Richard E. Taylor (1929 - 2018)

With an HPI of 64.10, Richard E. Taylor is the 2nd most famous Canadian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 63 different languages.

Richard Edward Taylor, (2 November 1929 – 22 February 2018), was a Canadian physicist and Stanford University professor. He shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics."

Photo of Bertram Brockhouse

3. Bertram Brockhouse (1918 - 2003)

With an HPI of 62.96, Bertram Brockhouse is the 3rd most famous Canadian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 61 different languages.

Bertram Neville Brockhouse, (July 15, 1918 – October 13, 2003) was a Canadian physicist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1994, shared with Clifford Shull) "for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter", in particular "for the development of neutron spectroscopy".

Photo of Jim Peebles

4. Jim Peebles (b. 1935)

With an HPI of 62.76, Jim Peebles is the 4th most famous Canadian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 60 different languages.

Phillip James Edwin Peebles (born April 25, 1935) is a Canadian-American astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical cosmologist who was Albert Einstein Professor in Science, emeritus, at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation. Peebles was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for his theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology. He shared the prize with Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star. While much of his work relates to the development of the universe from its first few seconds, he is more skeptical about what we can know about the very beginning, and stated, "It's very unfortunate that one thinks of the beginning whereas in fact, we have no good theory of such a thing as the beginning." Peebles has described himself as a convinced agnostic.

Photo of Donna Strickland

5. Donna Strickland (b. 1959)

With an HPI of 58.80, Donna Strickland is the 5th most famous Canadian Physicist.  Her biography has been translated into 76 different languages.

Donna Theo Strickland (born 27 May 1959) is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the practical implementation of chirped pulse amplification. She is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She served as fellow, vice president, and president of Optica (formerly OSA), and is currently chair of its Presidential Advisory Committee. In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women. She has gone on to have the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Prize being set in her name.

Photo of Louis Slotin

6. Louis Slotin (1910 - 1946)

With an HPI of 57.44, Louis Slotin is the 6th most famous Canadian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Louis Alexander Slotin ( SLOHT-in; 1 December 1910 – 30 May 1946) was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project. Born and raised in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Slotin earned both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Manitoba, before obtaining his doctorate in physical chemistry at King's College London in 1936. Afterwards, he joined the University of Chicago as a research associate to help design a cyclotron. In 1942, Slotin was invited to participate in the Manhattan Project, and subsequently performed experiments with uranium and plutonium cores to determine their critical mass values. After World War II he continued his research at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. On 21 May 1946, he accidentally triggered a fission reaction which released a burst of hard radiation. He was rushed to the hospital and died nine days later on 30 May. Slotin had become the victim of the second criticality accident in history following Harry Daghlian, who had been fatally exposed to radiation by the same plutonium "demon core" that killed Slotin. Slotin was hailed as a hero by the United States government for reacting quickly enough to prevent the deaths of his colleagues. However, some physicists argue that Slotin's behavior preceding the accident was reckless and that his death was preventable. The accident and its aftermath have been dramatized in several fictional and non-fiction accounts.

Photo of Arthur Jeffrey Dempster

7. Arthur Jeffrey Dempster (1886 - 1950)

With an HPI of 53.19, Arthur Jeffrey Dempster is the 7th most famous Canadian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Arthur Jeffrey Dempster (August 14, 1886 – March 11, 1950) was a Canadian-American physicist best known for his work in mass spectrometry and his discovery in 1935 of the uranium isotope 235U.

Photo of Harriet Brooks

8. Harriet Brooks (1876 - 1933)

With an HPI of 48.39, Harriet Brooks is the 8th most famous Canadian Physicist.  Her biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Harriet Brooks (July 2, 1876 – April 17, 1933) was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist. She is most famous for her research in radioactivity. She discovered atomic recoil, and transmutation of elements in radioactive decay. Ernest Rutherford, who guided her graduate work, regarded her as comparable to Marie Curie in the calibre of her aptitude. She was among the first persons to discover radon and to try to determine its atomic mass.

Photo of Paul Corkum

9. Paul Corkum (b. 1943)

With an HPI of 45.09, Paul Corkum is the 9th most famous Canadian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Paul Bruce Corkum (born October 30, 1943) is a Canadian physicist specializing in attosecond physics and laser science. He holds a joint University of Ottawa–NRC chair in attosecond photonics. He also holds academic positions at Texas A&M University and the University of New Mexico. Corkum is both a theorist and an experimentalist.

Photo of Sylvia Fedoruk

10. Sylvia Fedoruk (1927 - 2012)

With an HPI of 39.11, Sylvia Fedoruk is the 10th most famous Canadian Physicist.  Her biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Sylvia Olga Fedoruk ([Fe-doruk]; Ukrainian: Федорук) (May 5, 1927 – September 26, 2012) was a Canadian physicist, medical physicist, curler and the 17th lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan, from 1988 to 1994.

People

Pantheon has 10 people classified as Canadian physicists born between 1876 and 1959. Of these 10, 3 (30.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Canadian physicists include Jim Peebles, Donna Strickland, and Paul Corkum. The most famous deceased Canadian physicists include Willard Boyle, Richard E. Taylor, and Bertram Brockhouse. As of April 2024, 1 new Canadian physicists have been added to Pantheon including Paul Corkum.

Living Canadian Physicists

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Deceased Canadian Physicists

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Newly Added Canadian Physicists (2024)

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Overlapping Lives

Which Physicists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 7 most globally memorable Physicists since 1700.