You know about Einstein, and you’re no doubt familiar with Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking, but there are plenty of famous physicists alive today that you should know about if you don’t already. Here are a few worth getting to know.
1. Alan Guth
A cosmologist and particle physicist, Guth is most famous for developing the idea of cosmic inflation, or an inflationary universe. This work helped nail down the details and fill in some of the gaps in the Big Bang theory.
Guth’s 1997 book, The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins, helped bring lay readers up to speed on this important work and made him famous outside the halls of academe. Guth is the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
