PHYSICISTS from Iran

Top 3

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

1. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (1958 - 2020)

With an HPI of 53.49, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the most famous Iranian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 38 different languages on wikipedia.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi (Persian: محسن فخری‌زاده مهابادی Fa-Kh-Ree-Zadeh; 1961 – 27 November 2020) was an Iranian nuclear physicist and scientist. He was regarded as the chief of Iran's nuclear program. Born in Qom in 1961, Fakhrizadeh joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the Iranian revolution of 1979. He attended Shahid Beheshti University and later received a PhD from the University of Isfahan. Beginning in 1991, he was a physics professor at Imam Hossein University. Fakhrizadeh led the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research and the Green Salt Project. Due to Fakhrizadeh's affiliation with the Iranian nuclear program, both the United Nations Security Council and the United States ordered his assets frozen in the mid-2000s. In the early 2010s, he established and led the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, which, according to the United States, conducted research potentially useful for nuclear weapons. Iran has denied that its nuclear programme has a military aspect. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Fakhrizadeh was the head of the AMAD Project. Following his death, the Iranian government said that in 2020, he helped develop COVID-19 testing kits and a vaccine for use during the pandemic. On 27 November 2020, the Israeli government assassinated Fakhrizadeh in a road ambush in Absard using an autonomous satellite-operated gun. In a June 2021 television interview, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen offered Israel's closest admission yet of its responsibility for the assassination. The Iranian government labelled the killing of the scientist an act of "state terror." The killing raised tensions in the region and the Iranian legislature passed a bill to block inspections of its nuclear program.

2. Ali Javan (1926 - 2016)

With an HPI of 48.15, Ali Javan is the 2nd most famous Iranian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Ali Javan (Persian: علی جوان, romanized: Ali Javān); December 26, 1926 – September 12, 2016) was an Iranian American physicist and inventor. He was the first to propose the concept of the gas laser in 1959 at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. A successful prototype, constructed by him in collaboration with W. R. Bennett, Jr., and D. R. Herriott, was demonstrated in 1960. His other contributions to science have been in the fields of quantum physics and spectroscopy.

3. Cumrun Vafa (b. 1960)

With an HPI of 41.94, Cumrun Vafa is the 3rd most famous Iranian Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Cumrun Vafa (Persian: کامران وفا, Persian pronunciation: [kɒːmˈrɒːn væˈfɒː]; born 1 August 1960) is an Iranian-American theoretical physicist and the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University.