Gustav Kirchhoff
1824 - 1887
HPI 79.2285 languages
Gustav Kirchhoff is most famous for his law of thermodynamics which states that the sum of the heat absorbed by a system and the work done on the system is equal to the heat emitted by the system.
The Most Famous
Physicists from Russia
47 notable people
Trending Physicists from Russia This Week
The top 10 Physicists from Russia trending on Wikipedia in the past 7 days, with a quick note on what drove the spike.
- #1
Mikhail Lomonosov
1711 - 1765
Trending in Russian (#63) Wikipedia (1,985 views, on Sep 14).
This page contains a list of the greatest Russians Physicists. The pantheon dataset contains 863 Physicists, 47 of which were born in Russia. This makes Russia the birth place of the 5th most number of Physicists behind United Kingdom and France.
Top 10 Russian Physicists
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Russian Physicists of all time. This list of famous Russian 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 Russian Physicists.
#1 #2 
Wilhelm Wien
1864 - 1928
HPI 78.9090 languagesWilhelm Wien is most famous for his law, which says that the wavelength of a blackbody radiation is inversely proportional to its temperature.
#3 
Andrei Sakharov
1921 - 1989
HPI 78.1195 languagesAndrei Sakharov was a Russian nuclear physicist and human rights activist who is most famous for his work in nuclear weapons research and development. He was a key figure in the development of the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb and became an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union's nuclear arms race with the United States.
#4 Mikhail Lomonosov
1711 - 1765
HPI 75.6988 languagesMikhail Lomonosov is most famous for his contributions to the field of chemistry. He was the first to discover that air is composed of two different gases, oxygen and nitrogen.
#5 
Arnold Sommerfeld
1868 - 1951
HPI 75.1165 languagesArnold Sommerfeld is most famous for his contributions to quantum mechanics, as well as his work on atomic spectra.
#6 
Pavel Cherenkov
1904 - 1990
HPI 74.1877 languagesPavel Cherenkov is most famous for his discovery of the phenomenon of Cherenkov radiation.
#7 
Ilya Frank
1908 - 1990
HPI 72.0370 languagesIlya Frank is most famous for his work in the field of electroencephalography (EEG) and neurophysiology. He was a student of Hans Berger and he built upon his mentor's work, which led to the invention of the EEG.
#8 
Igor Tamm
1895 - 1971
HPI 71.9776 languagesIgor Tamm was a Russian physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1958 with Pavel Cherenkov and Ilya Frank for their work on the Cherenkov Effect.
#9 
Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov
1928 - 2017
HPI 71.7378 languagesAlexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov is most famous for his work in the field of condensed matter physics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003 for his work in developing a theory of superconductivity.
#10 
Pyotr Kapitsa
1894 - 1984
HPI 71.4082 languagesPyotr Kapitsa was a Russian physicist and Nobel Prize winner. He is most famous for his work in low-temperature physics.
People by Birth Decade
Browse notable Russians Physicists grouped by birth decade. Each decade shows the top 10 by HPI; expand to see everyone.
1970s(1)
1950s(1)
1900s(7)
1890s(7)
1860s(8)
1850s(2)
1840s(1)
1830s(1)
1820s(1)
1710s(1)
Overlapping Lives
Which Physicists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 25 most globally memorable Physicists since 1700.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
